Book Review 2021

The annual book review, 2021 edition. Ratings are solely about how much I enjoyed the book. I’m not reviewing these books like a critic, if the book has a bunch of tropes or something, but it kept me hooked from start to finish, I’m not going to mark it down. For example, I actually love reading books with a Mary Sue main character, so my rating is going to be divorced from a book critics review there.

This is how a self-help book should be structured. Short sections, very little repetition, interesting insights. It also happened to be exactly what I needed to read at the time.

I actually really liked most of this book. I was hoping for more of a discussion around the Russia vs USA idealogical difference, but there really wasn’t anything about that. The communist vs capitalist thing was papered over with “Superman runs the economy, it’s all good”. Can’t air my grievances more without giving away too much. It’s an entertaining Lex vs Superman book, but don’t expect too much from the “Superman is a communist” angle, beyond being a plot device to pit him against Lex Luthor and others.

This suffers from the Therapy Book Problem (actually, it’s definitely one of the books he’s referring to), but nonetheless I found myself interested in the approach. The low rating is because of the huge amount of filler (they restated that this approach could work with any modality like 20 times), the overly-academic language, and because ultimately I wasn’t able to apply any of this to myself.

Recommended by the author of Fiber Fueled, another great book on diet. This is the book to learn about why a majority whole food, plant based diet is the way to go. So much data, paints a really clear picture of what the science says about meat, dairy, plants, cholesterol, macros, you name it. Also doesn’t shy away from talking about the conflicting studies, you’re not just getting a summary of the pro-plant side. The information in this book needs to be spread far and wide; I wish I had read this 10 years ago. I now follow a whole food, plant-based diet, when it’s available to me.

Full of good info, this really helped to solidify some habits, and now that I’m trying to get back into some of my old habits, this is the book I’m reviewing.

I ripped through these 10 books, around 4,000 pages, in a few weeks. They’re hugely entertaining, and feature exactly the sort of protaganist I like to read about; proactive, driven, positive, morally upstanding, etc. I’ve never read a xianxia series before this, but I think I’m spoiled by starting with Cradle.

Really fun format for a book, and Derek Sivers is the man. There are 27 short sections; each tells you how to live, with total conviction, but in conflict with every other section. It was fun to see which ones I was like “yeah, this is how to live”, and which ones I was like “why would you waste a life like that”.

I put it down at 80% finished. I like the characters, the plot is interesting, and I enjoy feel-good books, but it’s just so very heavy-handed. You don’t just see the characters being happy, or seeing things in a new light; it’s shoved in your face with great force. “Show, don’t tell” as they say.

This was really well-structured. He breaks down where greenhouse gases come from, what we need, what he thinks will work and what won’t, etc. I definitely came away with a better sense of where the problems lie. I appreciate that he kept the doomsaying to a minimum. I tune out when someone says how the world will be unlivable in 20 years, or Florida will be underwater. He stuck to the best forecasts we have, which entail a couple degrees of change in the next 50 years. I think artificially inflating the problem is counterproductive, and at best dishonest, so I appreciated this.

Fun setup through the first half, but once the mystery was uncovered a bit I found myself not caring at all about what happened.

Very cool narrative style, loved discovering more and more about the world; the history, the factions, the lore. The massive scale that the story takes place in was cool.

This was just garbage? Like a bad fanfic. I’m not sure why this is ever recommended. Fun idea with just terrible execution.

I didn’t know this was a short story (I keep the progress on books hidden on my Kindle), so I was really disappointed when I got to the end and realized that what I thought was just a somewhat interesting setup, was the whole book. This book has been getting rave reviews everywhere, it’s on the Goodreads book of the year list, and I just don’t get it. I’ve read books that were way better at conveying emotion, and the premise isn’t interesting enough to carry the short story. I think it just gets lots of votes because it’s so small, so a bunch of people have read it?

I loved the premise of this book, but disappointed with the story and most of the characters. It felt like the book ended in the middle of the story.

Spoilers ahead, but probably don’t read this book anyway.

Having one zany protagonist that doesn’t take anything seriously is one thing, but you can’t have every character be like that; the Deadpool thing only works if Deadpool’s the only one that doesn’t take the life or death situations seriously. It also got progressively more Ready Player One, with situations seemingly only created so Ryan could make a pop culture reference. There’s a character that can change their appearance, for example, and it’s stated earlier that their main purpose is to act in the movies produced by Generic Evil MegaCorp. Then that character is sent out as a frontline soldier in the big battle, presumably solely so Ryan can make puns about his various costumes he changes into.

It didn’t seem like it could decide between a hard magic system and a soft one, with very specific interactions being detailed in one chapter, and then hand-wavey stuff in another. Lots of questions left unanswered. Why doesn’t Augustus just destroy all his enemies? Or Pluto, for that matter? Why was Ryan allowed onto their private island to witness a high-level meeting, after only knowing them for 2 days? And then not allowed to see the drug garden the next day because it’s “family only”?

Really wanted to like this book but just too many issues.

Really close to a 5. I love the premise: Canadian dude somehow ends up in a xianxia world, then decides to exit the rat race. It’s a satire of all the xianxia tropes. The only thing holding this back from being a 5/5 is that the pacing feels off. There’s a ton of stuff that happens in the first third, then everything sort of slows to a crawl. Lots of slice-of-life chapters, which I can only take so much of before I need some plot development.

I mostly just chose the wrong book here. I wanted to be able to talk more intelligently about why I’m not a believer, not figure out how to undermine people’s faith. That being said, it was very interesting. The idea of skipping the metaphysical discussion and approach it more from an epistemological viewpoint, made a lot of sense.

Artwork was amazing, just wish it was used for a more deserving story. The “moral quandaries” had zero depth to them, there wasn’t enough background/logic to the whole “the new generation of superheroes are bloodthirsty maniacs” problem, the scenes felt really disconnected, lots of plot holes, I could go on.

I know this book is mostly just trashy self-help. I was trying to figure out a sort of listless guilt and lack of purpose I was struggling through, and just read this to get some ideas to chew on, which it did a passable job of.

Entertaining litRPG. It’s not going to be winning any awards but the plot was interesting, and I like the magic system.

I had forgotten most of what happened in #1 and #2, so I read a summary before diving back in. Turns out that wasn’t so important, because Sansa is pretty much the only existing character in here. That’s good with me, because she’s the only one I really cared about anyway. Dialogue is funny, the worldbuilding is as good as I’ve come to expect from Brandon Sanderson (that is to say, excellent), and the new side characters are way more interesting.

I’m not sure why this book just didn’t hit with me at all. On the surface the premise, characters, and setting should be my cup of tea. I think the main issue is that the main character is totally passive? The story just seems to happen to her, until the very end, where she decides to do something. Think I have trouble relating to a character like that.

Some really interesting stuff on willpower. Actually came away with two tips that were actionable and I continue to do, which is huge; with how much reading I do it’s rare to find a self-help book with new actionable advice. Would be a 5/5 if it had been trimmed down to about a third of the size.

I’m torn on this one, on the one hand it’s pretty generic self-help with not much new information, on the other hand it’s a really quick read and it reminded me of some things I should be doing. So for me personally it was good, just a quick reminder sort of thing, but I wouldn’t go around recommending it.

I know these books are really popular, but I didn’t get it. Murderbot-turns-out-to-have-feelings is a cool premise, but I didn’t feel like the story or supporting characters did the premise justice.

Entertaining series, with a cool magic system and a solid cast. Like Harry Potter, if someone made it good.

Part of the SCP lore, which I don’t really grok, but luckily it didn’t need me to. Really interesting premise, characters, plot, etc. Solid Lovecraftian horror.

Jonathan Haidt is the author of one of my favorite books, The Righteous Mind, so I jumped on this when I saw it was out. I think he lays out a really good argument for the “3 great untruths” as he calls them. They’re patterns I’ve seen myself, and I think it’s important to talk about them.

Couple good tips in here, could have been a (long) blog post though.

Apparently forgettable enough that I’ve totally forgotten that I read this. But I have highlights so I guess I did.

Honestly not sure why I read this, it’s as vacuous as I expected.

The perfect format to learn about Adler’s ideas. I don’t think they’re all correct, some of them are pretty zany, but I like the perspective.

Fun to read about “The Iceman” and all his feats. Did get me to start taking cold showers.

I don’t often read classics, and most of the time end up dropping them 10% of the way in. This one was really good. It’s the most boring premise, the life of a professor who doesn’t really experience anything notable in his life, but the emotion was conveyed really well.

Wanted this book to be much better than it actually was. Largely forgotten it all, and reviewing my highlights/notes doesn’t come up with anything all that interesting.

All the characters here felt 3-dimensional. Also loved the philosophy in the book, what it means to live life well.

Obviously well researched, lots of interesting bits about Leonardo. Ultimately I guess I just discovered I don’t like biographies that much, it sort of felt like work to get through.

This was more like a podcast given that it’s a dialogue and I listened to the audiobook. Excellent conversation, as expected from Sam Harris.

Entertaining read. That’s about all I remember.

The stuff about finding a niche and what constitutes a niche really grabbed me, and made sense, but the second half of the book is noticeably outdated, given this was written 10 years ago.

Easy, entertaining read but pretty low on info.

All the advice made sense, and the stories both illustrated the advice, and were interesting by themselves. Well written.