The Even More Annual, Yet Belated, Book Post

 Once again, I'm sharing my favorite and least favorite books that I read last year. As always, they are in alphabetically order, not by preference:

1. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
   Postman's classic book from 1985 is more relevant than ever, as the problem that he addressed (namely that our media is entertaining rather than informing us) has only gotten worse with the ability to create your own ideological bubble with social media and YouTube.
   
   
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
   Fantastic novel about an autistic young boy who tries to solve the mystery of the murder of a neighborhood dog. Really well done.
   
   
3. Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
   Maybe the best book I've read this year. Heartbreaking story of living through the attempt by the breakaway nation of Biafra to win independence from Nigeria and the vicious war that ensued.
   
   
4. The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women by Elizabeth Norton
   Just what it says on the tin, but very well done. An interesting look into an area of history that gets overlooked all too often.
   
   
5. Hoax: How the Left Invents Hate Crimes and Sells a Fake Race War to the American People by Wilfred Reilly
   Reilly is a professor of political science who compiled and examined a database of 409 incidents that were initially publicized as hate crimes but were later revealed to be at least dubious. Published just as the Jussie Smollett case broke, the book examines cases where the initial report gets wide coverage, while the later reveal of the truth is barely noticed. One frequent pattern that he has spotted is where activists create an incident (usually by putting up graffiti or sending themselves a death threat) and then use the ensuing publicity to aggrandize themselves.
   
   
6. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Carolina Criado Perez
   Fascinating look into how both historically and contemporaneously much of data collection focusses on men or excludes women. Sometimes, like for drug testing, this is both understandable (the companies do not want to risk what could happen if women in the test group are pregnant or become pregnant and birth defects develop) but also dangerous when drugs are later given to women.
   
   
7. The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Midieval Science by Seb Falk
   Much of what we think that we know about the "Dark Ages" (a term that historians long ago abandoned) is wrong, and this book breaks down more of the myths that continue. Going into great detail about how medieval scholars knew much more than you probably think about astronomy and other sciences.
   
   
8. The Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse
   Another entry in the Jeeves and Wooster series, and Wooster once again tries to remain unmarried despite his family and society. Wodehouse is a master of humor and observation.
   
   
9. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
   Weir is the author of The Martian, and this is another great hard science fiction novel. The hero is part of a highly speculative team that has to solve the problem of what is threatening all life on Earth. Like the Martian, lots of stuff goes wrong and has to be overcome with science. Highly recommended
   
   
10. The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
    The basis of the Netflix series, I liked it much better than the very good TV show. 
    
    
11. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
    Still working my way through classics I skipped when younger. Though dated frequently, the book still holds up as an exciting tale of alien invasion.
    
    
12. Who We Are and How We Go Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich
    Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Med School and an expert on ancient DNA, writes an engrossing book about the current state of our knowledge about ancient populations, their migrations and how populations have mixed over the years. The amount of ancient DNA available has exploded in recent years, and Reich says that research shows that basically no group anywhere on Earth has been in its current location more than 8 to 10 thousand years, and that history is replete with groups invading, conquering, and replacing other groups.
    
    

My least favorite books:

1. The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
   This book is loved by so many people, but I hated it so much. First off, this is the typical book aimed at women that if you reversed the gender of the characters, they would immediately see that the character that they are supposed to identify with is a terrible person. Second, the book is supposedly a presentation of Rumi and his ideas, but the character of Rumi, as presented in this book, and his great friend, Shams of Tabriz, are just obnoxious and would have been terrible to know. Plus the writing isn't even good, as every character in the, whether 13th Century Persian mystic or 20 Century American housewife, all sound exactly the same.
   
   
2. The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
   Again, I don't get what people see in this. It is supposed to be a heart-warming story of these elderly folk who fight back against injustice. But they do this by engaging in major felonies and endangering the lives of numerous people.
   
   
3. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
   This is supposed to be a classic. But nothing happens. Most of the book is told via the diary or letters of the governess of two children, and her writing is painful to read. James is clearly making her writing this bad, since the other parts of the book aren't written like this. Just dreadful.