2022 Reading List

Books I read in 2022

Approximately the books I read in 2022 (I’m certainly forgetting a couple). I’m happy to talk about almost any of these, and may write more about a couple of them.

Fiction

  1. A Half-Built Garden A read partially motivated by this blog post about democratic theory. The book didn’t really go into a great deal of detail about what the Dandelion Network was, which seemed thematically appropriate for the book, as unsatisfying as it was to me. I found it more valuable as a study on Voice over Exit, hard-headedness being an important component of that.
  2. All Systems Red The murderbot series is great. Highly recommend these short books.
  3. Artificial Condition
  4. Rogue Protocol
  5. The Fifth Season The Broken Earth Trilogy is the best book I’ve ever read that was written in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person. It’s a masterclass in humanization.
  6. The Obelisk Gate
  7. The Stone Sky
  8. Gods of Jade and Shadow
  9. The Grace of Kings My last fiction book of the year. A sprawling book, it’s the first one I’ve read with reference material (not much, just a cast list). It made it quite a bit better, I’ll probably do it again for high fantasy.
  10. Luster
  11. Mickey7
  12. The Ministry for the Future A Long and sprawling book. I admire the attempt to write a book that has a hopeful look at solving global warming, and weaves a few of the cynical predictions about our likely future into broad social stories. I’d be surprised if some of the ideas were actually implemented (Crypto seems fairly unlikely, antarctic pumping seems unlikely), but the neighboorhood of ideas at least seems compelling.
  13. The Book of Three
  14. The Space Between Worlds

Nonfiction

  1. A Libertarian walks into a Bear This book was very well told, hilarious, and engaging.
  2. American Kleptocracy
  3. Big Friendship
  4. Biography of Henry George I am still looking for a compelling biography of Henry George. This book had some interesting facts in it, and felt like a fairly reasonable work of scholarship, but I’ve really been spoiled by some excellent biographers.
  5. Citizenship in Hard Times
  6. Complicit The last book that I read in 2022. This book was illuminating, but not to it’s own credit.
  7. Democracy without Competition in Japan
  8. Framers
  9. God’s Shadow A great book. I love a history book that gives me a different view into a period of time and series of events that I thought I was familiar with.
  10. Happiness I really enjoyed the irony of listening to this book at 2x speed.
  11. High Conflict*
  12. How Minds Change*
  13. How Rights went Wrong I think this argument is incredibly important to grapple with, but I think the author has made it better outside of this book.
  14. How to be Animal
  15. In the Garden of Beasts Read this book and watched Cabaret. I recommend spacing those two things out more if you can.
  16. Independent Politics A great work of scholarship on an understudied aspect of the American political landscape.
  17. Lab Girl
  18. Let’s Talk about Hard Things
  19. Made in the USA
  20. Money & Liberation
  21. Digital Gold
  22. Mutualism I kept a journal for the first half of the year where I wrote down my thoughts about books right after I finished them. My note for this book was “This doesn’t really seem trustworthy”.
  23. One Billion Americans
  24. Polysecure
  25. Public Citizen
  26. Public Opinion A rather meandering analysis of politics and media in the US in the early part of last century. It’s wild to hear someone say that everyone (politicians) is scrambling to be called progressive.
  27. Small Power* An absolutely fascinating bit of scholarship based on interviews and surveys of Dem and Rep party organizers. I have a lot of thoughts about this book.
  28. Spite
  29. Status and Culture This felt like someone writing down a bunch of stuff I’d already heard. There was precisely one bit that’s worth more deep consideration and that was the claim that status systems that become reified lose their power, which is quite obviously not the case in a wide range of status systems (games, money).
  30. Strong Towns A good summary of arguments the author has been making for a long time.
  31. Strongmen
  32. The Cruelty is the Point
  33. The Dawn of Everything* Like a lot of Graebers work, this was incredibly thought provoking while being probably wrong on most of the details and claims. Some of the better conversations I had this year about a book were about this one.
  34. The Extended Mind* I’m glad that Andy Clark & David Chalmer’s essay is getting a popular treatment. On that front, this book seemed pretty good. I still think that the original essay is exactly wrong (the mind is embedded, not extended).
  35. The Fire is upon Us I watched the debate before and after reading this book. It really did add context to the debate and made me appreciate it more. The one line that I’m still stuck with is “I am a grown man, and perhaps I can be reasoned with. I certainly hope I can be”.
  36. The Shallows There’s a great deal of dialogue about the effect that social media has on us, and the way it shapes our thoughts. This book is part of that conversation in a way that makes it sort of useless by itself, but important in context. Which is all to say that Blog Symposia were great, and we should have more of them.
  37. The Undoing Project This book was so human. I liked Thinking Fast and Slow, and this was just an incredibly touching and beautiful look at the human relationships behind it.
  38. The Upswing This was a re-read. It’s a book I want to guide me more than it inspires.
  39. The WEIRDest People in the World
  40. Trust in a Polarized Age I came very close to enjoying this book, and would have done so if I had more time. I’ll probably end up swinging back around to it in the future. There’s a phenomenon I really want to explore more in this space where the analysis of trust, when discussed with people who are engaged in it instead of analyzing it, results in much less trust (but not discussing it, and just arranging a game of it can result in more trust). This book mentions prediction markets, which are an untrustworthy thing to most people, but they are a subject of tremendous fascination to people studying trust.
  41. What Love Is
  42. You’re Invited This book just felt braggy to me. The Art of the Gather is probably more useful to the average would-be reader.

*More in a future post.