A good friend asked me for a list of my favorite books. I put some thought into it, and decided it should probably be a blogpost. I’m not going to do a ranked list, because I think that’s impossible Comparing some of the books on this list to one another just doesn’t make sense.

I’m only going to include books that I enjoyed rather than just things I found useful. I think. Maybe.

I’m only going to include books that 1) I’ve read in the last ten years, or 2) if I read it more than 10 years ago, it was fundamental enough to me that I still revisit it, even if I have not re-read it.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I think I have to start with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I’ve written a lot about what this book means to me, and I won’t re-hash it here. You can read some of that on my blog, but CW for all kinds of heavy things.

HHGG is a book that meant a lot to a younger me, helped me through a lot, and has a lot of passages that absolutely hold up today (even though I have not been able to just re-read it.)

Emergent Strategy

Emergent Strategy is a work of non-fiction by adrienne maree brown, which was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever read.

It is, nominally, about organizing, and it provides a ton of super useful organizing advice, all hard won. Our makerspace is absolutely covered in quotes from this work and other works by brown.

But also, this book was very much not written for me. Several passages of the book seem specifically crafted to cause people like me (white, male, nerd) drop it and run. I almost did but I’m glad I didn’t. It was an incredibly rewarding book, and it’s probably the work of prose I recommend to other people most often.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore is by Robin Sloan.

I read this for the first time about 10 years ago, and it has stuck with me enough that I’ve re-read it since then and I revisit passages from it and essays from the author on a regular basis.

It’s a book about uncovering a secret society obsessed with immortality, and then instead of doing a Dan Brown it does something else. I dunno, it’s a very human book. There’s a shoehorned lovestory that I could take or leave, but the main premise about our place in the universe is really truly wonderful.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet / A Psalm for the Wild Built / Others

I’m four books in, and I’ve already started cheating.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (and the whole Wayfairers series, and especially A Closed and Common Orbit, but read ‘em all) and A Psalm for the Wild Built/A Prayer for the Crown Shy definitely belong on this list.

These are two unrelated series of books by Becky Chambers.

A Psalm for the Wild Built and a Prayer for the Crown Shy are novellas about a monk who tires of their life and decides to hike for a while, meets a robot, becomes the human ambassador to the robots, and then fucks around on a beach.

They are peaceful, hopeful meditations on purpose and meaning, and they’re beautiful. Honestly, they’re some of the most Appalachian books I’ve ever read, in spite of the fact that Becky is not from Appalachia.

And then there’s the Wayfarers series, which is a group of 4 loosely connected science fiction books about some people who kind of know one another in deep space. In spite of all the big flashy science fiction, the stories themselves are very small and personal, and the characters are very real.

All the books are worthwhile, but I think A Closed and Common Orbit was the best of them. It’s a small, sweet, intimate little thing about two very different people who suddenly find themselves intertwined.

Record of a Spaceborn Few, the third book in the series, was emotionally devastating for me in ways that I wasn’t expecting and was ill equipped to manage. It fucked me up.

They’re some of the best books I’ve read in my life, and could easily unseat any of the books I’ve ever held as my “favorite” if I ever took the time to really think about it.

The Lost Cause

The Lost Cause is a 2023 novel by Cory Doctorow.

I debated for a while if I was going to include a Doctorow book on this list at all, and then once I decided I probably would, I debated which one it would be.

And then I remembered The Lost Cause.

Cory has had a role in shaping a lot of how I view computer, and technology, and the relationship between people and technology and how messy all of that is. Many of his books are loosely disguised manifestos, a lot of them are targeted at the YA Audience.

Quickly, I will talk about some books that aren’t The Lost Cause:

Little Brother

was a great read when I was in the right demo for it. It’s a little dated now, but the hook is still Correct in ways that are mostly scary.

Homeland

(the big sequel to Little Brother) was written at a time when it felt like things might get better, but otherwise is very good. If you’ve never read any Doctorow, these are fine places to start.

Pirate Cinema and For The Win

are also YA novels about technology and people. FTW is also about the financial crisis. Pirate Cinema is also about copyright.

Makers

The book I most strongly considered putting on this list before I remembered The Lost Cause was Makers, which… It was published in like 2008 or so, and it feels dated throughout, but it’s also very much about today in ways that result in me thinking about it and referencing it fairly often.

The Lost Cause

But then I remembered The Lost Cause, which I read late last year. The Lost Cause is set in a near future CA, and is about climate change disasters, MAGA extremists, immigration, refugees, and perseverance.

It’s the bleakest hopeful book I’ve ever read, and just absolutely full of interesting ideas about how people might relate to one another.

But it’s also a Doctorow novel, which means every third page is a lecture on some political ideology, or some technological idea. Many of these lectures are absolutely vital to the plot, but that doesn’t make them any less lectures.

It may not be your cup of tea, but it very much was mine.

Neuromancer

Neuromancer is by William Gibson.

I don’t actually have much to say about this one. I really enjoyed it. I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything of Gibson’s that I’ve read, but this was the first. It’s atmospheric and moody and just a lot of fun to read. It’s also surpisingly relevant in spite of it’s age.

The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride is by William Goldman.

If you’ve only ever seen the movie, do yourself a favor and read the book. It’s conceit (that it is an abridgement of a much longer and more boring novel, to bring it in line with the more streamlined and adventurous version that the author’s father would read him when he was sick) is beautifully executed.

The bit blaming Stephen King for blocking publication of the sequel is equally wonderful.

The whole thing is good and wholesome and full of fun little ribs and asides that it just lives in my head all the time.

And, of course, the movie was a delight too.

Meddling Kids

Meddling Kids is by Edgar Cantero. It got billed in the US as something like ‘The Scooby Gang is all grown up and now the great old ones are angry’ which … I mean, it nearly is that.

It’s more like The Famous Five are mostly grown up, severely messed from everything they lived through (those that did live through it) and now they have to stop the apocalypse.

It blends traditional mystery and horror elements well. It’s not clear if there are actually any supernatural elements in the story until very near the end when it becomes clear if there are any supernatural elements in the story, repeatedly, in a couple of fun ways.

It was a good inversion of a lot of what I expect out of horror and mystery, and I really dug it.

Cat’s Cradle

Cat’s Cradle is by Vonnegut, but feel free to swap in a bunch of his other novels here because I have read and love most of them.

If you’ve read any Vonnegut, you know what to expect. If you haven’t… well, it’s a bleak novel about the last survivors at the end of the world passing the time before they’re all dead (largely by their own hands) that will make you laugh occasionally.

It is, somehow, not the only one of Vonnegut’s novels that is at least partially about the last survivors at the end of the world passing the time before they’re all dead. This was a theme of his.

I should really read the handful of his books that I never did. The ones that I have are all pretty wonderful.

Rod Albright Alien Adventures

This is a series of Middle Grades novels I found when I was 6 or 7 that fundamentally shaped how I approach literature. It was written by Bruce Coville.

I recently had the pleasure of re-reading one of the books in the series (The Search for Snout, which is in no way a beat for beat remake of The Search for Spock except it totally is) with a friend’s kid, and it held up so much better than I expected.

I met Bruce, the author, as a middle school student. He was electric and lively and made me want to write.

Mentions (Honorable and otherwise)

Depending on how you count it, that’s now 11 or 15 or 19 books. I’m going to stop there.

At some point in the future, I’ll probably replace one or more of the above with something by Ursula K. Le Guin, and something by Octavia E. Butler. I’m working my way through all the novels of each of these authors right now, and they have been very good so far, but I haven’t spent enough time with them for them to make it to the list.

I considered putting a Terry Pratchett book in contention, but decided against it for no good reason other than that I couldn’t decide which one to include. Small Gods, maybe? Or Making Money? Monstrous Regiment? The Theif of Time? I like most of the Discworld series a lot. I could have also included Nation, which is not a Discworld novel.

10 years ago, I would have included Neverwhere and/or American Gods, and probably also Good Omens, but not anymore, because the author is a monster and I won’t let his ideas back in to my head.

I also breifly considered putting Transmetropolitan on the list, but It is not a book (well, a series) that I would recommend without lots of caveats. Transmetropolitan is a comic book series written by Warren Ellis. Ellis used to be a man for whom I had a lot of respect. Then he was accused by dozens of women of “manipulation, gaslighting, coercion, and other forms of emotional abuse” and issued the most cop-out non-apology imaginable.

I feel like that should probably disqualify his inclusion on this list, you know? But I still spent a few minutes considering if I wanted to put Transmetropolitan on the list, because it had such a profound impact on me. So I’m mentioning that I considered it and decided against it.

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