Mind-expanding Reading

Mind-expanding Reading

I didn’t read as much this year, and even less of it was great. But here are some articles and books that I enjoyed.

Laurie Penny’s “The Consent of the Ungoverned.” If you read one thing about #metoo, this is the thing to read.

Speaking of #metoo and the general up-swelling of women’s anger and refusal to just sit down and take it anymore, there was also The Al Capone Theory of Sexual Harassment, and of course, Susan Fowler’s stone cold post of her very strange year at Uber, perfectly delivered in a way so the story, finally, couldn’t be ignored.

Oh, and this op-ed in the NYTimes, asking a good question: Why is it that women are always the younger half of the relationship? What are we losing in those years of independence that we don’t get?

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. It is an unusual book. It’s a book clearly written by someone who normally writes shorts stories. But it is funny, and sad, and ultimately very memorable.

Partitioning Complexity by Kent Beck, was a nice rundown of how he deals with complex systems despite not being the natural master of complexity.

Nonviolent Communication. A classic. I was not expecting to learn much, in fact, I thought that NVC was something that people abused to silence debate. Instead, it was far more subtle and savvy.

Finally, while I didn’t exactly enjoy it, slogging through Greenlanders was ultimately worthwhile just for watching Jane Smiley as a master of her art, writing a book in the style of a Norse saga.

You can see other books I read on my goodread’s shelf, including The Stone Sky (on sale as of this writing for $5!), and Rich People Problems.