The Books I Read in 2013

Just like last year I decided to publish an overview of the books that I’ve read during the year.

This year I managed to read 48 books (I am really missing my daily commute, don’t believe the 47 in the picture above) which I’ve put in the following categories:

Philosophy

Mcluhan’s Understanding Media is the single most important book on technology that I’ve ever read. His probes are all-encompassing and still very relevant 50 years after their first publication. Taleb gave me a new way of looking at the world and a set of tools for thinking that is richer than Dennett’s attempt at doing the same. Carse’s classic is well worth reading and I would love to read more Žižek in 2014.

• Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man — Marshall McLuhan (link)
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (link)
• Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking — Daniel C. Dennett (link)
• Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility — James P. Carse (link)
• Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium — Paul Levinson (link)
• First as Tragedy, Then as Farce — Slavoj Žižek (link)
• Het socratisch gesprek — Jos Delnoij (link)
• McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed — W. Terrence Gordon (link)
• The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, and Trust — Robert David Steele (link)

Digital Rights

I expect this category to grow in 2014 with more books about privacy, freedom of expression and the Internet. Solove delivers good arguments on why privacy is important and Edwards (inadvertently) showed me how scary it is to work for Google.

• Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security — Daniel J. Solove (link)
• I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 — Douglas Edwards (link)

Learning

My focus will move away from learning, but I still managed to read some fascinating books on the topic in 2013. Harrison left me itching to try his method for running meetings with large and diverse groups. Illich clearly showed the institutionalizing effects of schooling (confusing being taught with learning and confusing certification with competence). Gatto made me loathe to put children in schools (read Dumbing Us Down, the Underground History is less cogent).

• Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide — Harrison Owen (link)
• Deschooling Society — Ivan Illich (link)
• Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling — John Taylor Gatto (link)
• De canon van het onderwijs — Emma Los (link)
• The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling — John Taylor Gatto (link)

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The book club read nine books in 2013. By far the most thought- and discussion-provoking was Morozov battling “internet-centrism”, “epochalism” and “solutionism”. Eggers enlarged current Google and Facebook practices to show us the grotesque direction we are moving in. Zamyatin wrote a Russian version of “1984” (way before Orwell) subverting the concept of freedom. Silver was a great read and Lanier gave me the useful concept of “Siren Servers”.

• To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism — Evgeny Morozov (link)
• Makers: The New Industrial Revolution — Chris Anderson (link)
• The Circle — Dave Eggers (link)
• Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet — Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn, Jérémie Zimmermann (link)
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t — Nate Silver (link)
• Bleeding Edge — Thomas Pynchon (link)
• We — Yevgeny Zamyatin (link)
• Who Owns the Future? — Jaron Lanier (link)
• The New Industrial Revolution: Consumers, Globalization and the End of Mass Production — Peter Marsh (link)

Fiction

For some reason I had yet to read Kafka’s The Trial. It didn’t disappoint. Shteyngart made me laugh the hardest (with Thomése coming in a close second) with his near-future dystopian novel on our hypercommercialized digital future.

• The Trial — Franz Kafka (link)
• Super Sad True Love Story — Gary Shteyngart (link)
• Cat’s Cradle — Kurt Vonnegut (link)
• De laatkomer — Dimitri Verhulst (link)
• 2BR02B — Kurt Vonnegut (link)
• How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia — Mohsin Hamid (link)
• Homeland (Little Brother, #2) — Cory Doctorow (link)
• Het bamischandaal — P.F. Thomése (link)
• Gelukkige Slaven — Tom Lanoye (link)

Other

There were some real gems in this miscellaneous category. Feddes has set the standard for books on cities. Because of Hillis I finally understand how computers work. My friend Dorien Zandbergen‘s PhD thesis gave some wonderful insights into hacker culture in the bay area. Van Casteren’s book made me think of my early teenage years living in a young neighbourhood in a forensic town just above Amsterdam.

• 1000 jaar Amsterdam — Fred Feddes (link)
• Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips: 153 Amazing & Inexpensive Tips for Extremely Lightweight Camping — Mike Clelland (link)
• The Pattern on the Stone (Science Masters) — W. Daniel Hillis (link)
• Japan’s Cultural Code Words: 233 Key Terms That Explain the Attitudes and Behavior of the Japanese — Boyé Lafayette de Mente (link)
• The Incredible Secret Money Machine — Don Lancaster (link)
• New Edge, Technology and Spirituality in the San Francisco Bay Area — Dorien Zandbergen (link)
• Thoughtless Acts?: Observations on Intuitive Design — Jane Fulton Suri (link)
• The Big Lebowski: An Illustrated, Annotated History of the Greatest Cult Film of All Time — Jenny M. Jones (link)
• Lelystad — Joris van Casteren (link)
• Treat Your Own Neck 5th Ed (803-5) — Robin McKenzie (link)
• The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm — Tom Kelley (link)
• Een halve hond heel denken: Een boek over kijken — Joke van Leeuwen (link)
• How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum — Keri Smith (link)
• What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers — Richard Nelson Bolles (link)