- Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson – short story from the Stormlight Archive
- Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwall – really good historical fiction, some of Cornwalls output seems a little formulaic but this standalone novel felt really imaginative.
- Codebreakers Secret History – massively comprehensive book covering cryptography until about 1960 (post-enigma computer cryptography is covered only in the appendix). Given the subject matter it’s quite accessible though there are some long lists of German army organisation etc which did nothing for me.
- How To Be Right by James o’Brien – not especially great, it’s basically a list of topics and some memorable calls to his radio show about them.
- Eastern Horizons by Levison Wood – interesting travelogue about hitchhiking from Russia to India in 2004
- Walking the Americas by Levison Wood – slightly less interesting account of traveling across the Dorian gap
- A Walk Across Hadrian’s wall by Antony Hodge – an amateur writing about his walk across the wall, raised a couple of smiles in places. Picked up after holidaying near Hadrian’s wall and feeling the pull to walk it’s length.
- Inside Track by Trott and Kenny – interesting insight into the dedication and single-mindedness olympic athletes put into it
- Hungry for Miles: Cycling Across Europe for a Pound a Day. Funny, probably the best cycle travel book I’ve read, due to the characters involved.
- No Place Like Home, Thank God. By the same author as above, not especially funny, it didn’t have the characters around the author that made the last one what it was.
- Radicalised by Cory Doctorow – collection of short stories
- The soul of a new machine – absolutely fantastic – so much so I wrote about it.
- Bill Bryson – At Home – not sure what this is, sort of a handpicked popular history of sociology, science and economics of things that affected homes. Enjoyable though.
- A History of France from Gaul to de Gaulle by John Julius Norwich. JJN is probably my favourite historian, accessible and interesting.
- An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson. It’s never occurred to me to seek out books specifically about managing engineers. There was a lot of great ideas, plays and thought provoking things in here though.
- Fall; or Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson – it’s Neal Stephenson.
- Heroes by Stephen Fry – interesting to read the details of stories I know vaguely from childhood and popular culture. Good to tie back the labour of Hercules with the pictures depicted at Bolsover Castle for example.
- An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson – re-read, it felt like there was so much I didn’t take in the first time round that I ought to read it again.
- The Beardless Adventurer by Donna Ashton – ok cycling travelogue
- 7 Habits by Stephen Covey – recommended by my leadership coach, some useful insights I came away with lots of notes.
- Calm: It doesn’t have to be crazy at work – mainly some short essays, some of which are broadly useful points, some of which I think are very context specific.
- Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy. Description of the rise and fall of great power nations for the last 500 years. Dry. Written in 1987 so the latter parts are a bit outdated.
- Wyrd sisters (discworld)
- Pyramids
- Moving pictures
- Witches abroad
- Small god’s
- Lords and ladies – Decided to pick up some more discworld I hadn’t read. I’d kind of put it down after not enjoying the first couple of Death books. Really enjoyed the witches theme though.
- Assassin’s Creed – I’d played the game, I was given the book. I struggled to get into it a bit.
- Planetfall – great series, four standalone books in a shared universe but with separate characters and protagonists, each of whom has some kind of mental health issue. Atlas alone was the weakest of the four I thought but the ending ramped up and won me back
- After Atlas (planetfall 2)
- Before Mars (planetfall 3)
- Atlas Alone (planetfall 4)
- Surrounded by Idiots. Recommendation from my coach, it’s an interesting look at personality types. I did a test afterwards and came out as being mostly blue (logical, analytical, systematic) and green (agreeable, relaxed, social), which mostly matched the attributes I recognised in myself from the book. It’s not straight forward to deploy the coping mechanisms mentioned in the book – people are more complicated. Ultimately though it’s a reminder that people are different and diversity gets things done.
- The Salt Path – inspiring story about someone with nearly nothing going on a long walk around the South West coastal path.
- The Power of Habit. Interesting book about willpower and developing habits. It was useful but it felt like it was twice as long as it could’ve been though.
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Dean Sas 