I try to make a list of the best things I read at the end of each year. This was what I came up with last january.
My man! I love Le Guin and Lathe of Heaven is a great book. Super interesting, entertaining, and I loved the clear influence of her ongoing studies of Taoism (related, her translation of the Tao Te Ching is what I point folks towards for a first look at Taoism).
What are your top 3 and why?
IBM’s book was very interesting for explaining the competing ideas at the dawn of computers. I generally think of the 50s as the decade it took to impliment von Neumann & Turing’s ideas, but it’s a lot more complex than that. It was not clear what the end goal was.
Schulz’s short stories are up there with Gogol and Borges. Rereading this made me realize that my favorite surrealist/fantastical style is that of a child’s misunderstanding the world.
Lathe: Le Guin writes a better Philip K Dick style story than Philip K Dick ever did…
If you’re interested in more on the roads not taken in computing, David Noble’s Forces of Production is worth a look (though out of print and hard to find at a reasonable price).
Happy to see Fail-Safe on the shelf too. I find myself re-reading that one every few years.
