Drew Diver

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This page is a dedicated reading log, check the Now’ish section for what I’m currently reading.

2023

• Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World by M. R. O’Connor

• A Hacker’s Mind by Bruce Schneier

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

• Commodore: A Company On The Edge by Brian Bagnall

• Electronic Dreams: How 1980s Britain Learned to Love the Computer by Tom Lean

• Open: How Compaq Ended IBM’s PC Domination and Helped Invent Modern Computing by Rod Canion

  I had no idea of the impact Compaq had on portable and desktop computing throughout the 80’s. Especially having the first 386 and 486 to market, creating the “spectacle” around a product announcement as well as their contribution for an “open industry standard” by rallying their competitors (The Gang of Nine) against IBM.

2022

• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine
• Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life by Rolf Dobelli
• All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior
• Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records by James Nice
• Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
• A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• Coming Up For Air by George Orwell
• Ubik by Philip K. Dick
• Valis by Philip K. Dick
• The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer
• The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
• The Cook by Harry Kressing

2021

• Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
• The Experience of Insight by Joseph Goldstein
• Educated by Tara Westover
• Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts
• The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
• The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe
• No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
• The Bodhisattva Way by Santideva
• The Zen Teachings of the Bodhidharma
• Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg
• Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
• Blood-Soaked Buddha/Hard Earth Pascal by Noah Cicero
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

2020

I’m missing my list for 2020, though to be fair, the whole year seemed somewhat absent.

• Ocean of Sound by David Toop
• Mona-Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
• Count Zeron by William Gibson
• Neuromancer by William Gibson
• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

2019

• The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
• I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Lain Reid
• The Illusion of Immortality by Corliss Lamont
• The One Device by Brian Merchant
• Why We Make Things and Why It Matters by Peter Korn
• Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford
• Coders by Clive Thompson
• Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus by Douglas Rushkoff
• In the Beginning… was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson
• Program or be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff
• Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff
• The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
• The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley
• Free Will by Sam Harris
• Waking Up by Same Harris
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
• All Minus One: John Stuart Mill’s Ideas on Free Speech Jonathan Haidt
• The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Semiosis by Sue Burke
• Foundryside (The founders #1) by Robert Jackson Bennett

2018

• A Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
• A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe
• All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland
• Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans
• Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber
• Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battle that Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris (horrible made up dialog but great bits on the feud and history of Nintendo and Sega)
• Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress by Steven Pinker
• Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans by Peter Wayner
• Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland
• Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are by John Kaag
• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by Jake Kushner (This was a riot!)
• On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
• Royal City, Vol 1 & 2 by Jeff Lemire
• Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
• Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems by Mark Hall (A lot of great UNIX history, second-hand print only)
• The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games by Jesper Juul
• Walden Two by B.F. Skinner
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson
• Fire & Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff

2017

• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
• Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels by Kenzaburō Ōe
• The Grid: Electrical Infrastructure for a New Era by Gretchen Bakke
• Git Commit Murder by Michael Warren Lucas
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• The Spark of Life: Electricity in the Human Body by Frances Ashcroft
• The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True by Richard Dawkins
• Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda by Noam Chomsky
• The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
• Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
• Free As In Freedom by Sam Williams
• Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft by G. Pascal Zachary
• Your Memory: How It Works and How to Improve It by Kenneth L. Higbee

2016

• Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the Onslaught of the VCR by James Lardner
• The Making of Karateka by Jordan Mechner
• Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik
• What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff
• Popkiss: The Life and Afterlife of Sarah Records by Michael White
• Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye

2015

• Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford
• Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists by Dan Barker
• Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason by Seth Andrews
• Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen
• Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo
• Blood Beneath My Feet: The Journey of a Southern Death Investigator by Joseph Scott Morgan
• The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll
• The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers by Kevin D. Mitnick

Modified: 17 May, 2023