• Book title: The Wager
• Author: David Grann
• Rating: 3.5/5

If this were a fiction book, I’d have criticized it, because nobody can be this unlucky. But it’s a true story, which makes it even crazier. Also, this book had me eating a ton of fruit, just to dodge scurvy.

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• Book title: Ubik
• Author: Philip K. Dick
• Rating: 6/5

I read through this book in a day. I couldn't put it down and during the whole reading season I was wondering WTAF was going on. I understand why it's on the list of Top 100 Novels of all time.

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• Book title: Start With Why
• Author: Simon Sinek
• Rating: 3.5/5

This is a good book, but I’m burned out on non-fiction self-help. I might skip them for a while.

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• Book title: The Afterlife Project
• Author: Tim Weed
• Rating: 4/5

Despite the grim premise, I enjoyed this book. The two unfolding stories created perfect cliffhangers. But the book lost one star because it makes in fact no sense.

Notes & Highlights

We don’t march toward death, it marches toward us
as a summer thunderstorm came slowly across
the lake long ago. See the lightning of mortality dance,
the black clouds whirling as if a million crows.
—Jim Harrison, Songs of Unreason

He supposes that in a certain way she is still alive, in his memory at least, where, unlike in the real world, time runs both forward and backward.

Tread lightly. Think ahead. Respect the reality that despite your intelligence you are inseparable from the great web of life, a species to whom much has been given and of whom much is expected in return, namely a firm commitment to stewardship as opposed to thoughtless exploitation.

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• Book title: Atmosphere
• Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Rating: 4.5/5

This book made me tear up a few times in public, so I have to give it high marks. It’s not the type of book I’d usually pick, but I loved it from start to end.

Notes & Highlights

Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

“Or better yet, we are the universe. I would go so far as to say that as human beings, we are less of a who and more of a when. We are a moment in time—when all of our cells have come together in this body. But our atoms were many things before, and they will be many things after. The air I’m breathing is the same air your ancestors breathed. Even what is in my body right now—the cells, the air, the bacteria—it’s not only mine. It is a point of connection with every other living thing, made up of the same kinds of particles, ruled by the same physical laws.

Language is what allows us to communicate. But it also limits what we can say, perhaps even how we feel. After all, how can we recognize a sentiment within ourselves that we have no word for? And perhaps, Joan thought, science is the same. Even the way we tell one another we want to live alongside them is limited by what we understand is possible in the world. What more could we say if we knew more about the universe?

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• Book title: The Anthropocene Reviewed
• Author: John Green
• Rating: 3/5

The book is ok. I like the premise. But I can’t stand how negative the author is at times. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed 3 stars.

Notes & Highlights

The five-star scale doesn’t really exist for humans; it exists for data aggregation systems, which is why it did not become standard until the internet era. Making conclusions about a book’s quality from a 175-word review is hard work for artificial intelligences, whereas star ratings are ideal for them.

Halley’s comet will be more than five times closer to Earth in 2061 than it was in 1986. It’ll be brighter in the night sky than Jupiter, or any star.

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• Book title: The Mountain in the Sea
• Author: Ray Nayler
• Rating: 4.5/5

The book explores what it means to be intelligent, while also asking: what is culture? What is consciousness? Fitting questions in the age of LLMs.

Notes & Highlights

“The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of.”

How we see the world matters—but knowing how the world sees us also matters.

That’s what we are, we humans—creatures that can forget. We have a horizon, beyond which we can remember very little. Nothing can reside in our minds forever, etched into us. No resentment, and no joy. Time rubs it away. Sleep rubs it away—sleep, the factory of forgetting. And through forgetting, we reorganize our world, replace our old selves with new ones.

A philosopher of the twentieth century, Paul Virilio, said: ‘When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution. Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.’

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• Book title: Project Hail Mary
• Author: Andy Weir
• Rating: 6/5

I finished the whole book in three days. An absolute banger of a story. I seriously can’t wait to see what the movie will do with this plot.

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• Book title: The Emperor of Gladness
• Author: Ocean Vuong
• Rating: 6/5

Probably my favourite book of the year (so far). Absolutely beautiful prose, and Ocean Vuong is slowly turning into one of my favourite authors.

Notes & Highlights

“When did he die, your husband?” “When does anybody die?” she shrugged. “When God says Well done.”

Because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself. We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering.

“Most people are soft and scared. They’re fucking mushy. We are a mushy species. You talk to anybody for more than half an hour and you realize everything they do is a sham to keep themselves from falling apart. From prison guards to teachers, to managers, psychiatrists, even fathers, anybody—even your stupid generals. People put on this facade of strength. They act like they have a purpose and a mission and their whole life is supposed to lead to this grand fucking thesis of who they are. [...] “They’re just scared somebody will look at them bad and judge ’em. Scared somebody will see through the fake-ass armor they’ve wasted their whole lives building.

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• Book title: Letters to a Young Poet
• Author: Rainer Maria Rilke
• Rating: 2.5/5

I didn't connect with this book. I don't know why it's so hyped, and why people enjoy it that much. Most of the letters felt so random to me. Maybe there is a time and space for a book like this, and I simply wasn't in the mood. Or maybe I am not grappling with any of the issues that Rilke addressed in his letters to Kappus.

Notes & Highlights:

To love is also good, for love is hard. Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is just preparation.

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