I recently mentioned that I’m working my way through a backlog of book purchases. This is actually somewhat unusual for me. I’ve always had a long list of books I wanted to read, but I usually only had a few unread books waiting on my shelf. But lately, I’ve been building up a large library of books I haven’t read. Sitting on my shelf right now:
- Conquerors’ Legacy by Timothy Zahn
- Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
- Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
- Diaspora by Greg Egan
- The City and the Stars by Arthur C Clarke
- Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram
- How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
- Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time by Michael Kane
- Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization by John Robb
- Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Don’t you just love how non-fiction almost always has a long, descriptive subhead? The only one that doesn’t in this list is How We Decide, and that’s perhaps because Lehrer chose a self-explanatory title. The others have fluffy titles that need some sort of explanation. Except Boyd. That’s a biography of a guy named John Boyd. But I suppose he’s more exciting when you know that he’s a “Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War”. Then again, GEB has a subhead that’s more mysterious than the title. So I’m just babbling now and should probably stop (and then read these books). Interestingly, I thought I had more books to put on this list, but I’ve made relatively good progress the last few months…