{"id":12153,"date":"2025-12-29T21:38:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=12153"},"modified":"2025-12-29T21:38:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T21:38:23","slug":"2025-in-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2025\/12\/29\/2025-in-books\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 in Books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While the world is burning down with quantum hype, this reformed quantum computing blog is now a book blog. Always has been. This year my links are affiliate links, I will maybe earn a beer if all you all click and buy something<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books read in 2025:<\/strong> 56<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My favorite fiction book of 2025:<\/strong>
Borges and Me: An Encounter<\/a> by Jay Parini<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My undergraduate literature thesis was on the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. I argued that Borges had the basic structure of G\u00f6del’s incompleteness theorem spread throughout his stories. It’s probably no surprise that a partially fictionalized story (“novelistic memoir”) of a literature graduate student romping around Scotland with Borges is my top pick for 2025. This is a bit of a classic road novel mixed with a delightfully on point portrait of one of the unique writers of the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


My favorite “non-fiction” book of 2025:<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology<\/a> by Lawrence Weschler<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you’re even in Los Angeles, I recommend a stop at the Museum of Jurassic Technology<\/a>. The museum of what? Exactly. Maybe it’s past it’s prime, but David Wilson’s museum of unreality is wonderful. I enjoyed this book as the author attempts to track down what is real and what is not real in the museum, and finds himself lost on the boundary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did I re-read more Neal Stephenson again?<\/strong>
Yes I did. The entire Baroque cycle. If you want to nerd out on Newton and Leibniz and also like pirates, well this is your series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Book 1: Quicksilver<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Book 2: The Confusion<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Book 3: The System of the World<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I also reread Stephenson’s early ecothriller<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zodiac<\/a> by Neal Stephenson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And yes there was even new Stephenson, the first volume of the Bomb Light series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polostan<\/a> by Neal Stephenson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Did I read anything more sophisticated?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Classics?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cannery Row<\/a> by John Steinbeck contains the best opening paragraph in American Literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Passenger and Stella Maris<\/a> by Cormac McCarthy. Stella Maris’s portrait of a troubled mathematician is stunning, I cherish having gotten to spend time talking with Cormac at the SFI. And this is why he was great to talk with: Two Years After Cormac McCarthy\u2019s Death, Rare Access to His Personal Library Reveals the Man Behind the Myth<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AI, AI, AI, and more AI<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why yes! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity<\/a> by Adam Becker roasts the techno-billi-bros by simply repeating exactly the insane things they have being saying for decades. I miss the groovy technologists, buried now under piles of Reagonomics (which sounds like a comic, but is a actually a tragic.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vernor Vinge is the proclaimed inventor of the singularity concept, I read his short stories and a novel by Vinge, and was struck by how once one finds the singularity argument your world view seems irrevocably changed. And now I watch this happen to my friends, and am not sure how to intervene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge<\/a> by Vernor Vinge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Peace War<\/a> by Vernor Vinge <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And then there is my runner up for book of the year, which will throw into the AI category because, well you should read the book (keywords: the ocean is amazing, the game of go)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Playground<\/a> by RichardPower<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Isn’t there an antidote for all this AI?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection<\/a>\u00a0by Michael Harris which I found through an interview<\/a> with the amazing song writer John K Samson made me think about the time when being a computer person made you a nerd, not a techno bro. Now we are living through another such transition, we will be the ones who remember the world before LLMs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On Bullshit<\/a> by Harry G Frankfurt who said that “bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are”. This reminded me of the time I lost my soul and worked for a bullshitting CEO. (I’d say I sold my soul, but the story is better than that, my soul was held ransom, but with a twist on the standard ransom stories, in my story you learn that you shouldn’t negotiate with bullshitters). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SciFi?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, lots, some rereads, some new. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adrian Tchaikvosky continues to be an author whose every new book I will read, all three of these were good reads<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Saturation Point <\/a>by Adrian Tchaikovsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Walking to Aldebaran<\/a> by Adrian Tchaikovsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Human Resources<\/a> by Adrian Tchaikovsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ken Liu’s short stories and novel come recommended<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories<\/a> by Ken Liu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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All That We See or Seem\u00a0by Ken Liu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I reread the three-body trilogy, it was about as I remembered it. Though maybe the third book was not as crazy as I remember, and the second not as badly translated as I remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Three-Body Problem<\/a> by Cixin Liu translated by Ken Liu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Dark Forest<\/a> by Cixin Liu translated by Joel Martinsen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Death’s End<\/a> by Cixin Liu translated by Ken Liu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Finally a non-fiction sci fi recommendation: a good history of the crazy early history of SciFi<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction<\/a> by Alec Nevala-Lee<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More SciFi<\/p>\n\n\n\n