The Aptly Named, Sam's Blog

An ongoing list of books I’ve read.

📚 indicates that I have a physical copy that I can lend to local folks, so feel free to ask.

2024

• Hawa Hawa by Nabarun Bhattacharya and Subha Prasad Sanyal 📚
  27th Oct

• Hell Yeah or No - what’s worth doing by Derek Sivers 📚
  2nd Oct

• The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
  17th Sep

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 📚
  2nd Sep

• Sum - Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
  11th Jun

• Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde - And Other Strange Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson
  24th May

• The Checklist Manifesto - How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
  11th May

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
  18th Apr

• Slow Productivity - The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport 📚
  28th Mar

• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
  10th Mar

• English, August - An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee 📚
  27th Feb

• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
  10th Feb

• The Creative Act - A Way of Being by Rick Rubin 📚
  27th Jan

2023

• Saving Time by Jenny Odell
  23rd Nov

• Negative Money by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
  18th Oct

• Welsh’s Synthesizer Cookbook by Fred Welsh
  2nd Jul

• Patch and Tweak by Kim Bjørn and Chris Meyer 📚
  30th Apr

• The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
  28th Mar

2022

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  26th Dec

• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
  24th Jun

• Mirror Made of Rain by Naheed Phiroze Patel
  10th Jun

• Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
  21st May

• Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
  30th Apr

• On Photography by Susan Sontag
  26th Feb

2021

• The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 📚
  20th Dec

• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
  5th Sep

• Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
  21st Aug

• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
  11th Apr

• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
  20th Mar

• The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack
  9th Mar

• Rembrandt: Art Masters Series by Typex 📚
  14th Feb

• How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
  7th Feb

2020

• The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin
  27th Dec

• The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
  13th Dec

• Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India by Sujatha Gidla
  22nd Oct

• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
  22nd Aug

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚
  19th Jun

• Keep Going by Austin Kleon 📚
  25th May

• Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson
  24th May

• There There by Tommy Orange
  15th Mar

• Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob 📚
  27th Feb

• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport 📚
  12th Jan

2019

• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell 📚
  28th Dec

• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear 📚
  12th Oct

• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
  11th Aug

• Rework by Jason Fried
  24th Jul

• How to Be Black by Baratunde R. Thurston
  20th Jul

• The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life Before 8AM by Hal Elrod
  2nd Jul

• Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright
  3rd Mar

• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
  1st Mar

• An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
  17th Feb

2018

• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
  3rd Nov

• March: Book One by John Lewis
  30th Aug

• The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield 📚
  30th Aug

• The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe
  30th Aug

2017

• Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
  6th Oct

• Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
  16th Sep

2016

• Death’s End by Cixin Liu
  9th Oct

• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
  31st Jan

• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
  17th Jan

2015

• On Being a Photographer by David Hurn
  31st Dec

• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
  12th Sep

• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  17th Aug

• The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck 📚
  10th Aug

• The Martian by Andy Weir
  2nd Jul

• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
  23rd Jun

• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 📚
  2nd Apr

• Light, Gesture, and Color by Jay Maisel 📚
  16th Mar

2014

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury 📚
  19th Dec

2013

• Garry Winogrand by Garry Winogrand 📚
  15th May

• A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
  15th May

2012

• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  2nd Dec

• The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges
  24th Nov

• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
  14th Oct

2011

• Reamde by Neal Stephenson
  23rd Oct

• Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana
  6th Sep

2010

• Absolute Superman: For Tomorrow by Brian Azzarello
  6th Jun

• Siddhartha: An Indian Poem by Hermann Hesse
  12th Apr

• A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
  14th Mar

• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
  11th Feb

• Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov
  9th Feb

• Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan
  17th Jan

2009

• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
  29th Oct

• Zodiac by Neal Stephenson
  13th Oct

• The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway
  13th Oct

• Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  9th Sep

• Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  31st Aug

• The Stranger by Albert Camus
  29th Aug

• Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov
  23rd Jul

• Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov
  8th Jul

• Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  22nd Jun

• Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
  18th Jun

• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  5th Jun

• The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
  1st Jun

• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
  19th Feb

• Anathem by Neal Stephenson
  3rd Jan

2008

• Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
  15th Sep

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  31st Jul

• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut 📚
  18th Jul

• Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton 📚
  12th May

Previous

• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

• The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

• On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

• On Art and Life by John Ruskin

• The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman

• Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon by Chuck Palahniuk

• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

• Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

• Why I Am So Wise by Friedrich Nietzsche

• Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings by Paul Reps

• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

• The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers by Henri Cartier-Bresson

• The Camera by Ansel Adams 📚

• Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt

• The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle

• The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn 📚

• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman

• Winogrand: Figments from the Real World by Garry Winogrand

• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson