Eli Bendersky's website - "The Birth of Britain: A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Volume I" by Winston Churchill - yes, that Churchill :) While it was started in the 1930s, the writing of this 4-volume history of Britain and its former colonites was interrupted by WWII and Churchill's positions as prime minister. It was finished in the 1950s. The writing is very good, and the book appears to be well-researched, although occasionally the author resorts to pure speculation about historic events that weren't sufficiently documented (but admits it explicitly). This volume starts at Roman times and continues until the end of the war of the roses in the late 15th century. Although the endless procession of kings and skirmishes with Scotland and France can be tiring at times, overall I really liked this book and plan to read the next volume.
- "China in Ten Words: Essays" by Yu Hua - a loose collection of autobiographic snapshots, historical bits from the times of the cultural revolution and ramblings about modern China. Not bad, but not particularly good either.
- "Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David" by Lawrence Wright - a detailed day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David accords, interspersed with a fairly detailed history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the second half of the 20th century. Not an easy read for anyone emotionally vested in the topic; this book is liberal in dispersing blame on both sides. IMO it really tries hard to walk the tight rope of objectivity and does a reasonable job at it, and this is quite an achievement given the case at hand.
- "The Theoretical Minimum" by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky - the first book in Susskind's "the theoretical minimum series", teaching classical mechanics using Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations. While I had fairly challenging Physics courses during my EE studies, I never studied mechanics like this - I suppose they only teach it to Physics majors. The book is definitely not pop-science, there's a lot of math - university-level knowledge of Calculus and linear algebra is required (and even some differential equations). The first half or so is easy to follow casually, and the rest is much harder. I felt the book moves too quickly from some point on, heaping on content without sufficient time to provide motivation and deepen understanding through worked-out examples and problems. On the other hand, if you have very little time and you want a taste of how "real physicists do physics", the book is a good, quick overview.
- "Children of Ruin" by Adrian Tchaikovsky - second part of this sci-fi series. I found this one much more challenging - there are too many characters, and the plot is too non-linear. It was more confusing than fun, and not much new after the first book.
- "The Alignment Problem By Brian Christian: Machine Learning and Human Values" by Brian Christian - attempting to explain the alignment problem in AI and possible approaches to solve it. It's an OK book, but overall not particularly insightful. A quick summary is: "this is what the alignment problem is, we have very rudimentary ideas on how to fix it, and 90% of the book is basically filler about the history of AI research".
- "The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac" by Graham Farmelo - a pretty good biography of the great quantum physicist.
- "Blood, Sweat and Pixels" by Jason Schreier - a collection of articles about game development, tracking some aspects of the history of specific games. Overall interesting and entertaining, though much less technical than I'd like.
- "Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets" by Sudhir Venkatesh - a very unusual book written by a sociologist who managed to gain the trust of a gang leader in Chicago and tagged along for years of gang activities as well as life in the projects in general. Provides a unique insider glimpse into the life of a segment of society which doesn't get much exposure.
- "Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov - a memoir. As usual, Nabokov's mastery of words and prose is second to none. This is an autobiography, but one that only focuses on the first ~20 years of Nabokov's life, with very little dedicated to anything afterwards. As such, it's not particularly useful in telling the reader much about his development as an author; instead, we get an insider view into the life of a young boy in an aristocratic family in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Re-reads:
- "A Russian Journal" by John Steinbeck