What I Read in 2020, H2

The second half of 2020 was fairly busy – I began life as a graduate student (!), and the academic reading put me off more casual reading for a while but December provided an opportunity to slip back into books. I only managed to pick up a few, but I’ve enjoyed most of them:

  • First, Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A bestseller in its day, I’d never heard of it before and don’t remember having seen it on book recommendation lists either. But a mention on Eugene Wallingford’s blog (which I’ve been enjoying immensely!) got me to pick it up and of all the longform pieces I’ve read this year I’d say this was the one that resonated most strongly with me. One of the lines in the book, “Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind”, has been running through my mind like a mantra since. ZAMM is at its heart an exploration of the concept of Quality and a desire for excellence – it’s a tad long but very readable, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly.
  • I’m halfway through Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach and it’s as good as most people say it is. Who knew number theory could be so fascinating? He has several public lectures on YouTube that are very good (and in which he displays a jaw-dropping proficiency in languages!)
  • Philip K Dick’s Ubik, my second PKD novel after Androids. It explores pretty interesting ideas including cryogenics and psychic abilities, but I felt the disjointed plot, flat characters and gratuitous twist made it much weaker than it could have been. Perhaps I just don’t quite get his style? But sci-fi like William Gibson’s Neuromancer show that you can create fever-dream worlds without sacrificing coherence, so I found Ubik a pretty disappointing read. However it is short, so it might be worth the time just to get to know a classic piece in the sci-fi canon. Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, recommended by a speaker during this year’s ISMIR workshops. I probably wouldn’t have found this on my own but it’s always fun to read the work of someone who’s done a lot of thinking about a topic, and the art is gorgeous to boot.
  • Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a friend’s recommendation. A short, light, whimsical read.
  • Walter Isaacson’s Einstein. It’s my fourth Isaacson book, and I picked it up because I’d been wanting to read a little more about the history of math and science. It’s well-researched, frames Einstein’s work against the cultural backdrop of the early 20th century, and explains how it fits in with the work of other scientists of the time including Heisenberg and Bohr. I never thought the day would come when I’d wish I hadn’t dropped physics early in high school, but here we are!

Blogs

Eugene’s blog also led me to Frank Chimero’s blog, which I’ve also loved. He writes so beautifully that it’s hard to pick a favourite post, but I’ve got a line from Better Words on my current lockscreen: “Artfulness is abundance. Or is it exuberance?” It echoes sentiments expressed by ZAMM and George Leonard’s Mastery on the relationship between excellence, art, technical depth and care in a way that’s both humorous and insightful.

Articles

In terms of articles, The Observer has been releasing great interviews with big names in the tech space including Daniel Ek and Marc Andreessen. I came across the New Yorker’s profile of Zhang Yitang and it was a good companion to what I was reading at the time (Hofstadter’s work, Einstein’s biography) as well as a fun introduction to the twin prime conjecture.

Comics

Finally, I picked up Alice in Borderland after the Netflix adaptation came out and even though we’ve had lots of battle royale stories in the past few years, the manga doesn’t feel stale at all. (The loveline, on the other hand….)

Well, that just about wraps up my reading for this year. I’ve got GEB to finish, and will probably start on Eric Baum’s What is Thought next. Ted Chiang’s short stories are incredible but so heavy that I can never read more than one at a time – perhaps I’ll finally get around to finishing Exhalations next year too. Thoughts? Recommendations?