Reading List
This is a collection of books and articles I've read, or want to read. The ones I've finished have some brief thoughts attached— but without a hard "rating" since I think it's more fun to pick a book based on a description than a number. I hope this list is useful for inspiration on what to read, whether that be a computer science paper or a novel.
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere — ZZ Packer
Interpreter of Maladies — Jhumpa Lahiri
Finished: Sunday Jul 19, 2026
On the whole, interesting read. There were instances where the book felt a bit pretentious: for example, using unnecessarily jargony terms and borrowing phrases from other languages instead of expressing the idea in English. That said, those were unobtrusive enough that I found this book readable— albeit with some concentration— and informative. Interesting examination of what constitutes populism (and what doesn't) and some ideas on why populism is such a persistent problem for democracies, plus the author's brief thoughts on how best to engage with populism within the context of a representative democracy. Also, it's short (~100 pages) and doesn't waste words. I'd recommend it for anyone who's interested based on the title as long as you're willing to read patiently and put up with some obnoxious term-ism.
Vigil — George Saunders
Finished: Sunday Jul 05, 2026
As is obvious from my reading list, I'm a big fan of George Saunders. I think he has such a knack for conveying the value of fiction— living inside someone else's head for a little made, making a connection with a person you'll never meet who nonetheless shares an understanding of something vital about life— all while writing stuff that's actually fun to read. Vigil is no different. I burned through it in a day (which is a testament to both its short length and its readability) but it's remained in my mind much longer. It's an exploration of culpability, judgment, radicalism, and empathy, and avoids being too tidy. I've gotta admit, my gut reaction at times was "C'mon, can we just send this guy to hell and be done with it?" but the book rises to the occasion a lot more than that knee-jerk condemnation (without being an apologist for greed). Very much recommended if you're up for some ambiguity and tempered judgment of a first-glance black-and-white bad person.
Small Gods — Terry Pratchett
The Silver Bone — Andrey Kurkov
Rebecca — Daphne Du Maurier
Una Trinchera en Marte — Karlos Zurutuza
Finished: Wednesday Apr 01, 2026
I heard about this book in an article in El Malpensante magazine and was intrigued partially because I'd never heard of Balochistan before. (I'd be more embarrassed to admit this if I felt that a lot of other people in the U.S. might know of the region.) I couldn't find a print edition available easily in the U.S. so I opted for the digital version. It's a heavy hitter just about the entire time: forced disappearances in Pakistan, religious repression in Iran, and horrid living conditions and limitations on freedom in Afghanistan. It's almost hard to believe that so much misfortune can befall one group of people. Despite the heavy themes, I found this to be a great read. Very engaging through, with a lot of focus on major Baloch figures of the 21st century. I learned a lot about the region and the people, and think this book does an excellent job grounding a difficult topic in real conversations with real people.
Los Suicidas del Fin del Mundo — Leila Guerriero
Finished: Friday Apr 17, 2026
First time reading something from the crónica genre (though the style is not totally foreign— it reminds me of Joan Didion in some ways). I liked this one pretty well. It's hard to review a book in Spanish because there was surely so much that went over my head, and I did it as an audiobook no less. At times I didn't feel like the narrative was as cohesive or tight as I might've liked, but it wasn't so distracting as to make me stop reading. Would be interested in circling back to something by Leila Guerriero another time.
The Sun Also Rises — Ernest Hemingway
America and Iran — John Ghazvinian
Ahora Me Rindo y Eso Es Todo — Álvaro Enrigue
It's On You — Nick Chater, George Loewenstein
Gulag: A History — Anne Applebaum
The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson
Finished: Sunday Jan 11, 2026
I want to say that I love the horror genre, but really I love a small subset of it. I can't stand tawdry gore or over-the-top religious themes, and putting a face to a villain usually ruins the experience for me, because the idea is what's scary to me, and a clear depiction removes any space for the imagination. Well, that's what I loved about Hill House: it's spooky, but hardly horror as we think of it today. There are some interactions with mysterious forces, and paranormal activity, but the bulk of the book is centered around an unreliable narrator being affected by the house. Without spoiling the book, I'd say it's a gripping psychological depiction of four people's responses to paranormal activity. Highly recommend for those who are interested in a ghost story with little spotlight on actual ghosts.
Basin and Range — John McPhee
Finished: Monday Dec 29, 2025
One of my favorite books I read this year. I've been told that John McPhee was a pioneer of "creative nonfiction," and that tracks. This isn't an introduction to geology, or a pop-science treatise— it reads like a long campfire tale wound around the theme of geology and centered in the Basin and Range region of the West. The writing is gorgeous, the story engaging, and I found the subject matter deeply interesting. I've had an itch to learn more about geological history for a while now, and Basin and Range didn't totally satisfy it— it was not quite long or focused enough to do so— but it 100% strengthened my resolve to learn more. Great read for anyone who'd enjoy some nonfiction that trends literary.
Gallatin Canyon — Thomas McGuane
Finished: Sunday Dec 07, 2025
I have "Ninety-Two in the Shade" on this list, but it wasn't available at my library, so I grabbed this collection of short stories by the same author. It was okay. I skipped half of one— the longest story in the book— because I found it slow and kind of boring. As for the rest of the book, I didn't find much that really *moved* me. There were some nice descriptions of nature, and I felt the book on the whole was well written, but after any given story I felt very little closure or found very little to take away. I couldn't help comparing to Raymond Carver's stories, which could be about such a mundane slice of life and yet always left me with something to think about. Overall, I didn't like "Gallatin Canyon" enough to continue on with "Crow Fair" (another story collection by McGuane), but didn't hate it enough to strike "Ninety-Two in the Shade" from my list.
How the Mountains Grew — John Dvorak
Ficciones — Jorge Luis Borges
Ninety-Two in the Shade — Thomas McGuane
Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming — Laszlo Krasznahorkai
Finished: Wednesday Nov 05, 2025
Took me a little while to get into this biography of Harry Truman, but once I was hooked I tore through it. It covers a lot of ground, from Truman's ancestral origins through his retirement from public office, though the bulk of the book focuses on the period from his ascent into the Senate through the end of his second term. I gained a huge appreciation for the complexity of being an emerging world leader during such a turbulent time as the 1940s and early 1950s. McCullough does an excellent job covering Truman's successes without being beholden to them, and the result is an intensely human portrait of a major historical figure. By the end of the book, I felt like Truman was a person I'd known at one point in my life. Highly recommend for anyone interested in a presidential biography and willing to work through nearly 1000 pages, engaging though they are.
These Truths: A History of the United States — Jill Lepore
Where I'm Calling From — Raymond Carver
Finished: Thursday Sep 04, 2025
This collection is a large selection of Carver's work (500+ pages of stories). I only found out about Carver by chance, but I love short stories and figured I'd check out something by him. I'm really glad I did. His writing is very direct, almost plain, but also extremely powerful and moving. Honestly, I don't really understand it, but it works. These stories are very realistic: many are a single day or night sliced out of some character's life, and nothing sticks out as totally out of the ordinary. But no matter the subject, I always found myself captivated. Highly, highly recommend if you like short stories.
The Road — Cormac McCarthy
Finished: Monday Aug 18, 2025
Really enjoyed The Road. Not as much as Blood Meridian— Blood Meridian is my favorite book of the year so far, to be fair— but still very solid and very different. A few things I really liked or found interesting: McCarthy's incredibly sparse prose, the way the story has so many unclear details yet is still compelling and powerful, and the descriptive minimalism that made a lot of harrowing scenes actually *more* engrossing. I liked the dark, chaotic philosophy of Blood Meridian more, but would easily recommend The Road. The only thing that didn't fully capture me was the ending, which I found a little too abrupt and neat, but on the whole still well worth the read.
Moby-Dick — Herman Melville
Finished: Saturday Mar 07, 2026
I gave up after 433 pages. Didn't have the drive to finish the last 150. When I started Moby Dick, on audiobook because I wanted to listen during some long drives I had to take, I felt hooked immediately. Such an awesome sense of adventure, an interesting setting with worthwhile characters, and a lot of humor. But somewhere in the middle of the book things got weighed down. It felt like I couldn't progress more than 5 minutes of plot-time without some incredibly dense, abstract musings from Melville about a topic that's at best tangentially related. I pushed myself through a couple hundred pages in the hopes of getting back into the action, but it persists: 4 pages of plot, then 8 pages of unnecessary detail about some aspect of a ship or a whale, then 2 pages of a poor imitation of Shakespeare, repeated ad nauseam. I very much wanted to love this book, but there's in reality there's a lot I'd rather read.
Finished: Monday Sep 08, 2025
McCullough does it again. This one's relatively short at ~300 pages, and it goes by fast — it's history that reads like fiction. It covers the first year of the Revolutionary War, from Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights through the Battle of Trenton at the close of the year. Throughout, it gives great historical context and perspective in addition to interesting characterizations of Washington, William Howe, Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox, and other important important figures of the war. My only complaint is that this book didn't cover the entire war, because I really wanted to keep reading at the end.
King Lear — Shakespeare
Finished: Sunday May 18, 2025
I hadn't read any Shakespeare in a long time— maybe since high school— and wanted to come back to it with a more mature point of view. (I definitely didn't fully appreciate Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet when I was 16-17.) Luckily, my library had a pretty good copy, The Pelican version. It took me a bit of time to get into the groove; I had thought that most people had trouble with Shakespeare because of the old-timey words (e.g. "dost"), but at times it truly is another language. I had to rely heavily on the footnotes to clarify words used in ways that are now archaic, let alone many double-entendres and puns. Despite that, it read decently well. I wasn't blown away by King Lear, but to be fair it was meant to be watched, not read. For that reason, I'm very excited to watch a recorded version of the play, now that I have the background from reading it first!
How Democracies Die — Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
Finished: Sunday May 04, 2025
Great read, and pretty short and sweet. I found this to be very interesting, especially with comparisons to autocratic tactics used in Peru, Venezuela, Turkey, and elsewhere. It's sad that this book, published in 2018, is almost quaint in its description of norms broken by the GOP and especially Trump. The authors hadn't yet faced the Jan 6 insurrection; Trump's packing of the Cabinet with extreme, unqualified loyalists (and the GOP's cowardice in refusing to block such obviously dangerous appointments); Trump's hints at his desire to run for a third term; illegal deportations of people from American soil to Bukele's gulag in El Salvador; defiance of court orders and attacks on the legitimacy of judges; and many, many more attacks on the "guardrails" of America's government. The end of the book was hopeful and somewhat grounded, but the idea of politicians working out their differences and compromising to accomplish shared goals is pretty hard to imagine right now.
Dead Souls — Nikolai Gogol
Finished: Saturday May 03, 2025
Loved this book. Even though it's incomlete— parts of the manuscript are sporadically missing and apparently Gogol burned much of the second act— it was well worth the read. The humor holds up well 180 years later; many passages had me laughing out loud. I'd recommend Dead Souls if you're into Russian literature, and I'm excited to read more of Gogol's work.
Streets of Laredo — Larry McMurtry
Finished: Wednesday Mar 26, 2025
Pretty similar to Dead Man's Walk, but longer, and often slower. Another McMurtry book I tore through pretty quickly, but I found myself lightly skimming some pretty long sections that felt tedious or uninteresting. I think part of the issue for me is McMurtry's writing style: he'll often imply something and then go on to state it explicitly, which stacks up into a lot of unnecessary sentences over the course of the book. I found this grating at points.
But back to the book on the whole. Again, not nearly as good as Lonesome Dove. I'm kind of sick of the one-sided simple villains who are evil just to be evil (Mox Mox is a prime example). And I think this book could've been a lot shorter without trimming anything significant. It was enjoyable enough on the whole, but I probably wouldn't recommend it.
Dead Man's Walk — Larry McMurtry
Finished: Friday Mar 21, 2025
Let's start with the good: I couldn't put this book down. Similar to Lonesome Dove, I found myself sneaking in my reading whenever possible. It'd been a bit since I'd read such a gripping story.
Continuing the comparison to Lonesome Dove, though, I didn't think this was as good a story. Call and McCrae as middle aged men were more interesting to me than their 20 year old selves, and the story was obviously constrained by the fact that they both had to survive. And, as I felt with Lonesome Dove but much more apparent here, the villains were pretty one-sided and simplistic. Lastly, Dead Man's Walk often hit my upper limit for gruesome/gratuitous violence.
On the whole, it was a fun read that went by fast, but really didn't hold a candle to Lonesome Dove.
Above- and Belowground Impacts of European Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) on Four Native Forbs — Various authors
Finished: Monday Feb 24, 2025
Very interesting to see that the soil effects of buckthorn (post-removal) can be as damaging to native plants as the dense shade produced by its canopy. I also didn't know that exotic earthworms are attracted to buckthorn's nutrient-rich soil (seemingly due to large amounts of organic matter from the many tough buckthorn leaves produced by the tree).
The invasive shrub European buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica, L.) alters soil properties in Midwestern US woodlands — Various authors
Finished: Monday Feb 24, 2025
Cool read. Takeaway is that European buckthorn increases both nitrogen and carbon in soil, producing slightly more N— likely through its nitrogen-rich leaves which degrade rapidly— resulting in a decreased C:N ratio. It also acidifies the surrounding soil.
Shadows at Noon — Joya Chatterji
The Idiot — Elif Batuman
Nuestra Parte de Noche — Mariana Enriquez
Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy
Finished: Sunday Aug 10, 2025
Wow. I knew nothing going in— not even that it was a Western— and early on I was a bit worried that there'd be excessive, gruesome violence as seems to be the case for a lot of Westerns. Blood Meridian definitely was violent, but not as gratuitous as it could've been. The writing style is both insane and intriguing, and once I developed the taste for it I grew to really like it. (That said, there were plenty of archaic words and horribly complex sentences that I didn't really trouble myself over.) And as for the story: gripping, dark, layered, full of meaning. I usually love character development, but for much of the book it felt like the Kid and the Judge were the only characters that mattered — yet the weight behind the Judge alone was enough to keep me interested. Right after finishing this book, I sat and thought about it for a good hour or so, and I know it'll be bouncing around in my head for a while to come. Highly recommend for the well-told story and off-kilter perspective if you can tolerate a unique voice and some violence.
Cadillac Desert — Marc Reisner
Finished: Sunday Feb 16, 2025
Very much enjoyed this book. I didn't know anything about the history of water development in the West (and very little about dams and how bad they can be for the environment), so this was an educating read. It's pretty engaging and interesting throughout. My only real criticism is it feels somewhat dated at points— it was first published in '87— but the updated afterword from 2017 covered a lot of ground. On the whole, definitely recommend this to someone up for some long-ish nonfiction about water development.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd — Agatha Christie
Finished: Monday Sep 30, 2024
This was the first mystery book I've read since my childhood. I was looking for a classic *mystery*, not a thriller— less violence, more clues/deduction. On that front, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd definitely delivered. It's a fun, easy-to-read whodunnit that doesn't leave you hearing footsteps when you're falling asleep. Like I said, I don't have much experience with the genre so maybe I'm off base on this, but I wish there'd been a little more plot. The whole book is basically dialogue, and it works, but it's not as engaging as I might've liked. Interesting, but not really a page turner in my opinion. Would recommend this with that caveat, but it was a good book to read on vacation and I enjoyed it.
Pastoralia — George Saunders
Finished: Thursday Sep 19, 2024
Another day, another great George Saunders book. I enjoyed every story in this short read— a lot of good humor, and Saunders' classic talent of building a reality out of an absurd (often depressing) situation. Also highly recommend the audiobook for this one since it's narrated by Saunders himself.
Dopamine Nation — Anna Lembke
Finished: Wednesday Aug 28, 2024
Read about a third of this. I started it because it was recommended on an Ezra Klein episode about drug policy, and I was conveniently able to borrow the book. I had some issues with it: for starters, it's extremely pop-sci. That's fine, but I found a lot of it to be so simplified that it was almost confusing. The author also rubbed me the wrong way at times, and generally I wasn't getting much out of this book or really enjoying it. On the plus side, it reads very fast. For a more detailed description of neurotransmitters and the dopaminergic system, I'd recommend reading Behave and just skipping to the relevant chapters.
Bel Canto — Ann Patchett
Finished: Friday Dec 13, 2024
I've read one Ann Patchett book before: The Dutch House, which I remember liking a lot. Bel Canto was solid. I don't think I enjoyed it quite as much as The Dutch House— it dragged a bit in places despite not being a very long novel, and I got kind of sick of the metaphors around music/the constant fawning over the opera singer, Roxanne Coss. That said, it was still pretty good on the whole, and there were good stretches where I didn't want to stop reading. I'd recommend Bel Canto if you've read Ann Patchett before, but if not I'd probably start with The Dutch House.
The Worst Journey in the World — Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Finished: Tuesday Oct 01, 2024
I gave up on this one. It's a somewhat random pick— a 100 year old memoir of an ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, by a member of the crew (who I'd never heard of before). I really wanted to like it, and it has a lot of glowing reviews, but after 100-150 pages I couldn't go any further. The author, in the introduction, mentions that he wants the book to serve as a log of the journey, and he sticks to that religiously. I think the idea of reading exactly how this infamous exploration unfolded is interesting, but in practice it became way too much information I didn't care about. It felt like reading a ship's log more than a memoir or novel, and very little had happened in the story by the time I set the book down. Could see others enjoying this, but it wasn't for me.
Barbarian Days — William Finnegan
On Rhetoric — Aristotle
Peace Is Every Step — Thich Nhat Hanh
Lonesome Dove — Larry McMurtry
Finished: Friday Aug 16, 2024
Damn good book. Reminds me of Doctor Zhivago, with all the wandering and the vast, epic nature of the story. I couldn't believe how easily this one read— especially the last 2/3— considering it's nearly 1,000 pages long. One of the best books I've read in as long as I can remember.
Finished: Monday May 27, 2024
Cool read. I learned a lot about DHCP through this. Super interesting mechanism for an attack, along with other concepts (DHCP starvation, ARP spoofing) that I'd like to read up on more.
The World-Ending Fire — Wendell Berry
Stranger In A Strange Land — Robert Heinlein
Invisible Women — Caroline Criado Perez
Finished: Monday Apr 29, 2024
Very solid read. Took me a while to get through— I think just because I did the audiobook and I'm bad at those— but this was a very interesting and important book. The chapter on clinical drug development was extremely thought-provoking and threw the importance of the topic into sharp relief. This was my first intentionally feminist book, and I think it was a great entry point. Well-written and well-researched— would recommend.
Finished: Friday Mar 15, 2024
Pretty awesome resource for learning about WebRTC. I ended up reading a couple of RFCs for STUN and TURN to supplement this information. I'd need to reread this site (maybe multiple times) to solidify my understand, but found it really helpful.
The Song of the Cell — Siddhartha Mukherjee
Finished: Friday Feb 23, 2024
The Emperor of All Maladies was one of my favorite books I read last year, and Song of the Cell is just as good. I was the kid in high school who constantly griped about having to take bio, but this book made me actively interested in cell biology, the immune system, organ systems, etc. It's densely informative but reads like a work of fiction. Definitely going to be one of my top books of the year.
Finished: Sunday Feb 18, 2024
Interesting read, not too much content here. The encryption setup was interesting to read about; I've done some similar (albeit more basic) stuff with the web Subtle Crypto API and learned a few things from this paper.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem — Joan Didion
Finished: Friday Feb 09, 2024
Fantastic book. I'd never read anything by Joan Didion before but I quickly fell in love with her writing style. She's capable of being so blunt, succinct, and poetic at the same time; these essays were some of the most unique I've ever read. Some of my favorites were the title essay, Notes From a Native Daughter, and Goodbye to All That.
Behave — Robert Sapolsky
Finished: Friday Jul 05, 2024
Awesome nonfiction book. As someone with almost no prior knowledge of neuroscience, I learned a lot reading this ~700 page behemoth. It's very well written and has a great narrative flow, so it doesn't feel dry or tedious to work through. That said, I could've spent a week (or a month) digesting each chapter, as Behave is dense and sprawls across various disciplines. Overall, one of the best nonfiction books I've read in a long time.
Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro
Finished: Tuesday Dec 12, 2023
To me, reading Kazuo Ishiguro feels like getting on a crowded train and settling in. People slowly filter out over the coming stops, until you look up and realize you're the only one left.
...That didn't mean anything to you? Well, I guess the feeling is somewhere between cozy and haunting. But anyway, I really liked Klara and the Sun. It wasn't my favorite by Ishiguro—Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go are two of my favorite books of all time, so that's not a dig at Klara— but still a very enjoyable read. Awesome pacing during the climaxes, an interesting philosophical question at the core of the story, and beautiful writing throughout.
Liberation Day — George Saunders
Finished: Monday Nov 27, 2023
I have yet to read something by George Saunders and not like it. That said, I *especially* enjoyed Liberation Day. The characters have so much emotional depth, built so subtly and succinctly, that it's often impossible to judge them without nuance. I found these stories to be at once breathtakingly realistic and comically outlandish. I'd enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone who enjoys fiction.
Working — Studs Terkel
Finished: Wednesday Nov 29, 2023
This book is a bear. It took me a while to work through, and eventually I started skipping some interviews when I knew I wouldn't get into them. Still, I enjoyed this read on the whole. A lot of people suprised me in their eloquence, idealism, and/or insightfulness— including more than a few that I might've skipped based on just the job title alone. Definitely worth the read, and left me feeling more appreciative of the people I normally don't pay much attention to during the day-to-day.
Finished: Saturday Jan 13, 2024
As a developer who loves writing Elixir, this was an interesting read. Plenty of it went over my head, and I'll need a second read at a later date, but this paper greatly increased my understanding of type systems/theory and got me very excited for the introduction of the static type system for Elixir.
Things We Lost In The Fire — Mariana Enriquez
Finished: Sunday Oct 22, 2023
I was looking for a collection of short stories that were spooky, but without relying on gore, graphic descriptions, etc. (With horror, for me personally the magic is lost when the author leans too heavily on something tropey like a deranged killer or a grotesque description.)
This book totally hit the spot. I loved how each story gives a vague, disturbing vibe but doesn't end in a clean resolution. That, plus the basis in Argentine history. Would definitely recommend.
Obligatory Meaningless Copyright 2025
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