Summary of reading: January - March 2026

"Intellectuals and Society" by Thomas Sowell - a collection of essays in which Sowell criticizes "intellectuals", by which he mostly means left-leaning thinkers and opinions. Interesting, though certainly very biased. This book is from 2009 and focuses mostly on early and mid 20th century; yes, history certainly rhymes.
"The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics" by Ben Buchanan - a pretty good overview of some of the the major cyber-attacks done by states in the past 15 years. It doesn't go very deep because it's likely just based on the bits and pieces that leaked to the press; for the same reason, the coverage is probably very partial. Still, it's an interesting and well-researched book overall.
"A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons" by Robert Sapolsky - an account of the author's years spent researching baboons in Kenya. Only about a quarter of the book is really about baboons, though; mostly, it's about the author's adventures in Africa (some of them surely inspired by an intense death wish) and his interaction with the local peoples. I really liked this book overall - it's engaging, educational and funny. Should try more books by this author.
"Seeing Like a State" by James C. Scott - the author attempts to link various events in history to discuss "Why do well-intentioned plans for improving the human condition go tragically awry?"; discussing large state plans like scientific forest management, building pre-planned cities and mono-colture agriculture. Some of the chapters are interesting, but overall I'm not sure I'm sold on the thesis. Specifically, the author mixes in private enterprises (like industrial agricultire in the West) with state-driven initiatives in puzzling ways.
"Karate-Do: My Way of Life" by Gichin Funakoshi - short autobiography from the founder of modern Shotokan Karate. It's really interesting to find out how recent it all is - prior to WWII, Karate was an obscure art practiced mostly in Okinawa and a bit in other parts of Japan. The author played a critical role in popularizing Karate and spreading it out of Okinawa in the first half of the 20th century. The writing is flowing and succinct - I really liked this book.
"A Tale of a Ring" by Ilan Sheinfeld (read in Hebrew) - a multi-generational fictional saga of two families who moved from Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland) to Buenos Aires in late 19th century, with a touch of magic. Didn't like this one very much.
"The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook" by Hampton Sides - a very interesting account of Captain Cook's last voyage (the one tasked with finding a northwest passage around Canada). The book has a strong focus on his interaction with Polynesian peoples along the way, especially on Hawaii (which he was the first European to visit).
"The Suitcase" by Sergei Dovlatov - (read in Russian) a collection of short stories in Dovlatov's typical humorist style. Very nice little book.
"The Second Chance Convenience Store" by Kim Ho-Yeon - a collection of connected stories centered around a convenience store in Seoul, and an unusual new employee that began working night shifts there. Short and sweet fiction, I enjoyed it.
"A History of the Bible: The Story of the World's Most Influential Book" by John Barton - a very detailed history of the Bible, covering both the old and new testaments in many aspects. Some parts of the book are quite tedious; it's not an easy read. Even though the author tries to maintain a very objective and scientific approach, it's apparent (at least for an atheist) that he skirts as close as possible to declaring it all nonsense, given that he's a priest!
"Rust Atomics and Locks: Low-Level Concurrency in Practice" by Mara Bos - an overview of low-level concurrency topics using Rust. It's a decent book for people not too familiar with the subject; I personally didn't find it too captivating, but I do see the possibility of referring to it in the future if I get to do some lower-level Rust hacking. A comment on the code samples: it would be nice if the accompanying repository had test harnesses to observe how the code behaves, and some benchmarks. Without this, many claims made in the book feel empty without real data to back them up, and it's challenging to play with the code and see it perform in real life.
"Hot Chocolate on Thursday" by Michiko Aoyama - a bit similar to "What You Are Looking for Is in the Library" by the same author: connected short stories about ordinary people living their life in Japan (with one detour to Australia). Slightly worse than the previous book, but still pretty good.
"The Silmarillion" by J.R.R. Tolkien - enen though I'm a big LOTR fan, I've never gotten myself to read this one, due to its reputation for being difficult. What changed things eventually (25 years after my first read through of LOTR) is my kids! They liked LOTR so much that they went straight ahead to Silmarillion and burned through it as well, so I couldn't stay behind. What can I say, this book is pretty amazing. The amazing thing is how a book can be both epic and borderline unreadable at the same time :) Tolkien really let himself go with the names here (3-4 new names introduced per page, on average), names for characters, names for natural features like forests and rivers, names for all kinds of magical paraphenalia; names that change in time, different names given to the same thing by different peoples, and on and on. The edition I was reading has a helpful name index at the end (42 pages long!) which was very helpful, but it still made the task only marginally easier. Names aside though, the book is undoubtedly monumental; the language is outstanding. It's a whole new mythology, Bible-like in scope, all somehow more-or-less consistent (if you remember who is who, of course); it's an injustice to see this just as a prelude to the LOTR books. Compared to the scope of the Simlarillion, LOTR is just a small speck of a quest told in detail; The Silmarillion - among other things - includes brief tellings of at least a dozen stories of similar scope. Many modern book (or TV) series build whole "universes" with their own rules, history and aesthetic. The Silmarillion must be considered the OG of this.

Re-reads:

"Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
"Deep Work" by Cal Newport
"The Philadelphia chromosome" by Jessica Wapner
"The Price of Privelege" by Madeline Levine