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A mega-thread of all the books I read in 2023. The setup: one cast per book (oldest > recent), inc. an impression and a link. Comments, questions and extra recommendations welcome. This may take a while...
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#1: Alan Moore's Watchmen series (a 12 issue collection). The phrase that comes to mind for this series? "Frighteningly relevant". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#2: Underland by Robert Macfarlane. Ride- along as Macfarlane goes to some primal locations and provides a vicarious experience of the power of place. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/56082/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#3: the third volume (issues 12-18) of Skottie Young's and Jorge Corona's Middlewest. Beautiful art and a poignant tale of coming to terms with one's traumas. https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/middlewest
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
@msms
#4: The Complete Persepolis (Vol. 1 and 2) by Marjane Satrapi. An experience that helped me understand what it meant to be inside Iran during the Islamic Revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics)
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
@msms
#5: Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life. A text that took me deeper into the diversity of non-human agencies and understandings. https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/entangled-life
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
@msms
#6: The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman. A particularly wrenching rendition of an already unfathomable time in human history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
@msms
#7: There Are No Electrons by Kenn Amdahl. An odd and entertaining introduction to electronics that I actually recall with some fondness. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/304551
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#8: Keller Easterling's Extrastatecraft. Scary and exciting in a gloomy way. Lends supports to the idea that the singularity has already occurred (corp. personhood). https://www.kellereasterling.com/books/extrastatecraft-the-power-of-infrastructure-space
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#9: the 2nd volume of McGilchrist's The Matter with Things. Really helped me to see the malleability of our experience. Could've been longer tbh. https://channelmcgilchrist.com/buy-now-the-matter-with-things/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#10: Saga: Compendium One by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. A real experience; I was excited when I got to sit down and read this of an evening. https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/saga-compendium-one-tp
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#11: Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast. Felt a little twee to begin with but I actually found myself quite affected by the end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can%27t_We_Talk_About_Something_More_Pleasant%3F
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
@msms
#12: Daniel Hillis' The Pattern on the Stone. An orientation in computing akin to Petzold's Code (though perhaps a little softer). https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/277658
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
@msms
#13: Bastani's Fully Automated Luxury Communism. A decent manifesto that set me to thinking about a lot of things—especially the interplay of tech, labour and capital. https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/476-fully-automated-luxury-communism
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#14: Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders Trilogy. Classic fantasy, really. Dramatic and poignant and insert more literary adjectives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liveship_Traders
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#16: Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Like the preceding entries, this was evocative and managed to get me to buy in to and comprehend the non-human perspectives. https://adriantchaikovsky.com/children-of-time-children-of-ruin-children-of-memory.html#anchor3
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#17: Oral Histories of the Internet and the Web by Niels Brugger, Gerard Goggin. A history of a most foundational thing. Illuminating, esp. how it refactors conventional, anglo-centric narratives about the net. https://www.routledge.com/Oral-Histories-of-the-Internet-and-the-Web/Brugger-Goggin/p/book/9781032333380
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#18: Mystics, Masters, Saints and Sages by Robert Ullman and Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman. A collection of enlightenment anecdotes. Intriguing and a little underwhelming. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/922048
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#19: Everything Flows by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupre. I'm a sucker for attempted paradigm-cides, and this is one undertaken with class and humility. https://academic.oup.com/book/27525
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#20: Chris Miller's Chip War. I'm a dummy when it comes to semiconductors—both technically, and as an industry—so this served as a nice, light introduction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_War:_The_Fight_for_the_World%27s_Most_Critical_Technology
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#21: Health Communism by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant. I'm pretty blind to the discourse around contemporary healthcare (and how capitalism has entangled with it), and this helped me see a little more. https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2801-health-communism
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#22: Operating Systems: Three Easy Steps by Remzi H. and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau. Part of my continued attempt to get a Fingerspitzengefühl for computing. Serendipitous outcome of this? A continued sense of awe. https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#23: Jessica Bruder's Nomadland. A despairing look into how a society's underclass manage to subsist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomadland:_Surviving_America_in_the_Twenty-First_Century
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#24: Pessoa's The Entangled Brain. Bangs the drum of embodied cognition in a convincing fashion. Say it with me: "Embodiment matters. Embodiment matters. Embodiment..." https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544603/the-entangled-brain/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#25: Mike Prada's Spaced Out. Following my re-engagement with the NBA I wanted to better understand the modern "pace and space" paradigm. This really helped. https://www.triumphbooks.com/spaced-out-products-9781629378862.php?page_id=21
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#26 and #27: Complexity, Entropy and The Physics of Information Vol. 1 and 2. Probably "above my level" in technical terms, but a good interdisciplinary grounding in some foundational papers and proceedings. https://www.sfipress.org/books/complexity-entropy-and-the-physics-of-information
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#28: 2nd ed. of Rob Philip's Physical Biology of the Cell. A great map for cellular and molecular biology that makes the domain feel accessible more than intimidating. https://www.routledge.com/Physical-Biology-of-the-Cell/Garcia-Phillips-Kondev-Theriot-Phillips-Kondev-Garcia/p/book/9780815344506
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#29: Mahajan's The Art of Insight in Science and Engineering is, to me, actually better than the prettied up Street Fighting Mathematics. It provides sharp tools for reality comprehension. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/26055
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#30: Jackson's The Essence of Software asks the provocative question of what software is and proposes a novel approach for conceptualising it. https://essenceofsoftware.com
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#30: Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. Absolutely gorgeous, and with the narrative oomph that such impactful visuals deserve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterios_Polyp
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#31: ZOT! The Complete Black and White Collection by Scott McCloud. I'm not American but this felt very Yankee in its characterisation of naive optimism meets mundanity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zot!
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#32: A boxset of Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. "Poetic" is the first word that comes to mind. "Pure" is the second. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausicaä_of_the_Valley_of_the_Wind_(manga)
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#33: Miguel Sicart's Playing Software. The book's thesis—software is an active agent that helps us play our way to novel cultural, social, political forms—is one that resonated. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262047722/playing-software/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#34: Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind. An erudite collection of dialogues and inquiries directed at the intersection of multiple disciplines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steps_to_an_Ecology_of_Mind
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
@msms
#35: Hammond's The Art of Doing Science and Engineering. Honestly, this felt like quite an odd book. Probably because it's a memoir, a critical thinking style guide, lecture notes... https://press.stripe.com/the-art-of-doing-science-and-engineering
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#36: James Bridle's Ways of Being. A timely read for me—really helped me open up to alternative modes of thought and Copernicus the human experience. https://jamesbridle.com/books/ways-of-being
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#37-40: The Sandman: Books One to Four by Neil Gaiman et. al. Picked up b/c of the Netflix series (which I saw a little of) and b/c a lot of people called this out as a seminal work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(comic_book)#2022/3_paperback_reprints
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#41: John H. Miller's Ex Machina. A pretty fun entry point for the discourse around agent-based modelling and cellular automata. https://www.sfipress.org/books/ex-machina
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#42: World's Hidden in Plain Sight by David C. Krakuer. An accessible survey of the complexity science idea maze. https://www.sfipress.org/books/worlds-hidden-in-plain-sight
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#43: Grossberg's Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain. Quite a tome. It does a good job of connecting the mechanics of our embodiment to higher order functions. https://academic.oup.com/book/40038
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#44: Brian Arthur's Complexity Economics. I read this straight after Worlds Hidden in Plain Sight, and it was a decent sign-off to that text. https://www.sfipress.org/books/complexity-economics
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#45: Hannah Stowe's Move Like Water. A pretty arbitrary bookshop buy but one I'm glad I made. It helped me think about the significance of water, ecologically and culturally. https://www.hannahstowe.co.uk/books
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#46: Rupert Callender's What Remains? A timely read that caused me to contemplate—sincerely—the practicalities of death and the experience of those that remain. https://rucallender.com/product/what-remains-life-death-and-the-human-art-of-undertaking
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#47: the first issue of Ryan Cady and Andrea Mutti's Infinite Dark. The first of six first issues that I binged on a Saturday eve alongside a bottle of red. Scary space horror. https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/infinite-dark
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#48: Chapter 1 of Rich Watkin's Digital. The second of the first issue haul. Coincidentally, more space antics. This one was okay. Just okay. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1599347364/digital-comic-book-series
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#49: Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons and Dragons (Issue 1) by Patrick Rothfuss, Jim Zub and Troy Little. The crossover I didn't know I needed in my life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_and_Morty_vs._Dungeons_%26_Dragons
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#50: Issue 1 of Kirk Duggan's 1872. I'll be honest; I didn't know this was a Marvel thing. Enjoyed it (but not enough to pursue the greater series). https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/52072/1872_2015_1
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#51: Issue 1 of James Asmus' Evolution. Fairly haunting, given recent Covid phenomena. I adored the style. https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/evolution
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#52: Issue 1 of Claire Gibson's From Under Mountains. An enjoyable start but one I didn't feel compelled to pursue further. https://imagecomics.com/news/image-expo-announcement-from-under-mountains-comes-a-magical-fantasy-advent
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#53: Bronnie Ware's The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. Read the blog, bought the book; the blog was enough. https://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying/ https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#54: Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons and Dragons (the whole thing) by Patrick Rothfuss, Jim Zub and Troy Little. Yes, I read it all and it was a romp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_and_Morty_vs._Dungeons_%26_Dragons
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#55: The Art of Gig Vol. 1: Foundations by @vgr. Insightful, inventive and, to be honest, kinda agency-enhancing. https://artofgig.com
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#56: Robin Hobb's Fool's Errand. My partner picked up the Tawny Man trilogy at a charity shop, so I naturally appropriated it and dug in. Good decision, that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fool%27s_Errand_(novel)
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#57: The Art of Gig Vol. 2: Foundations by @vgr. I'd use the same adjectives for this as volume one though the impact was dulled as this is more for practicing indies. https://artofgig.com
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#58: The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines by David H. Wolpert et al.. Like others read in 2023, likely above my level. Also expected something more profound, or quake-booky. https://www.sfipress.org/books/energetics-of-computing-in-life-and-machines
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#59: The Book of Wilding by Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell. A pretty comprehensive survey (and advocation for) wilding. Made me look a little closer at my local natural environment. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/book-of-wilding-9781526659309/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#60: The Golden Fool by Robin Hobb (2nd part of the Tawny Man trilogy). Classic, high grade fantasy. Hemingway's iceberg is definitely present in Hobb's work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Fool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_theory
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#61: 20th anniversary ed. of the Pragmatic Programmer. One of two seminal engineering ways-of-working texts that my CTO at the time bugged me to read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pragmatic_Programmer
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#62: Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Frans Osinga. Boydian strategy is so much more than the OODA loop. I wish more people knew that. https://www.routledge.com/Science-Strategy-and-War-The-Strategic-Theory-of-John-Boyd/Osinga/p/book/9780415459525
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#63: Hiesinger's The Self-Assembling Brain. An accessible, contemporary work that convincingly weaves neuroscience, AI, robotics and genetics together. http://selfassemblingbrain.com
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#64: 20th ed. of Brooks' Mythical Man-Month. Second of two texts my CTO at the time stressed I read. This one was more timeless and enjoyable (for me, a non-engineer). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#65: Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, the 1st entry in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Begun due to a comic book delay and b/c my partner started it. It's the best thing. Read it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_of_the_Moon
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#66: Fool's Fate, the close to Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy. Quite pathos ridden, both narratively and b/c it's the final entry in a series I really enjoyed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fool%27s_Fate
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#67: Lewis and Zak's Essential Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science. A succinct and high utility primer that'll no doubt be a reference in the future. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179292/essential-discrete-mathematics-for-computer-science
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#68: Dennis P. Waters' Behaviour and Culture in One Dimension. Oooo, a fun read, especially as I was eyeing up the analog-continuous interface. Led me to think about product lines, too. https://1dimensional.com https://swellandcut.com/product-lines/
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Matthew McDowell-Sweet ∞
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#69: The seminal Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Easy to see how this nerd-sniped a lot of people and steered the intelligence dialogue entire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach
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