My 2022 in Books

There’s a special magic in reading books versus magazines, websites, emails, or newspapers. Here’s my journey across the dozens of books I read in 2022. If you’re looking for a good read, dive in!

Happy New Year!

The magic of books is like the magic of kissing. The infinite variety of kisses include the first kiss, cautious, daring, risky, like opening a book by a new author. A kiss is a collaboration between two people; likewise, reading a book is a kiss between two minds. Re-reading a beloved book is the kiss of camaraderie. Tearing through a book that you can’t put down is a hungry lover’s kiss. Closing a book you’ve loved reading is a kiss goodbye. That date you had that was going so well until the awkward goodnight kiss, whereupon you realized that you could never ever be with that person? That’s a book you abandon because it just isn’t your thing.

I read across many genres—magazines, newspapers, online—but the special magic of reading books captures an agreement between two minds: the writers who stopped big chunks of their lives to write books and the readers who stop smaller but still real chunks of their lives to read them.

I still prefer paper books, but that doesn’t stop me from listening to audiobooks or reading ebooks.

This is the ninth year that I’ve kept a running list of every book that I’ve completed for the first time and then shared that list as the first thing I post in the new year. It’s the first time I’ve done so in this newsletter, though, because I only launched The Dispatch at the end of January, 2022.

One reason I love doing this is that it helps me chart the course of a yearlong intellectual and emotional journey.

If you're curious about previous lists, then you can see the combined 2021 and 2020 lists here, the 2019 list here, 2018 list here, the 2017 list here, the 2016 list here, the 2015 list here, and the 2014 list here.

As always, thanks to my lifelong friend David Daniel for the inspiration to do this.

Two questions before we get to the list…

1. What were your favorite books of the year?

2. Which books in what follows did you read also during 2022?

My 2022 in Books

I read 43 books in 2022, which is more than the 32 books I read in 2021 and 29 books in 2020.

The Best Book I Read in 2022 without question was Maia Kobabe’s remarkable graphic novel autobiography, Gender Queer: a Memoir.

This is a gorgeous graphic novel that explains the non-binary, asexual experience from the inside. It reminded me of the David Foster Wallace book This is Water because it made me aware of the privilege I've enjoyed as a straight white guy with he/him pronouns... I've never had to defend or interrogate my gender, which is a luxury.

If the startling proliferation of pronouns confuses you, if you don’t understand why dead naming hurts a trans person, if you want to walk a mile in the shoes of someone who isn’t comfortable in the identity that came at birth, then read this book.

Gender Queer is also the most-banned book in America for reasons that I don’t understand. I don’t understand how somebody else’s different identity, journey, and choices affects mine. Nowhere in this book is Kobabe saying, “you cis-gendered people should really give this a try.” So what’s the threat?

The runner up book is Colin Bryan and Bill Carr’s Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon.

This remarkable book organized my prior piecemeal understanding of how Amazon does what it does. Anybody in business should read this. I wish I had a time machine to send a copy to myself a few years ago. The narrative ends a few years ago, unsurprisingly, and I long for an expanded paperback or companion volume that digs into how Amazon used the principles the book articulates during COVID.

My true high endorsement is that I was lucky enough to check this out of my local library, but I’ll almost certainly buy a copy to mark up because it’s that valuable.

The links below all go to Amazon pages where any purchase benefits the TD Foundation.

The List in Two Flavors

The tl:dr version… just a list of titles and when I finished them (the version with commentary is below):

1. Weber, David. Field of Dishonor: Honor Harrington 4). Finished 1/2/22.

2. Weber, David. Flag in Exile (Honor Harrington 5). Finished 1/5/21.

3. Weber, David. Honor Among Enemies (Honor Harrington 6). Finished 1/12/22.

4. Weber, David. In Enemy Hands (Honor Harrington 7). Finished 1/22/22.

5. Weber, David. Echoes of Honor (Honor Harrington 8). Finished 1/28/22.

6. Paul, Annie Murphy. The Extended Mind: the Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Finished 1/29/21.

7. Weber, David. Ashes of Victory (Honor Harrington 9). Finished 2/11/22.

8. Beyer, Kirsten & Mike Johnson. Star Trek: Picard. No Man's Land.  Finished 2/22/22.

9. O'Farrell, Maggie. Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague. Finished 2/28/22.

10. Gardner, Caleb. No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyper-Connected, Radically Conscious Economy. Finished 3/10/22.

11. Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—And How to Think Deeply Again. Finished March 12.

12. Weber, David. War of Honor (Honor Harrington 10). Finished March 21.

13. Aaronovitch, Ben. What Abigail Did That Summer (A Rivers of London Novella). Finished 3/2/22.

14. Weber, David. At All Costs: (Honor Harrington 11). Finished 4/10/22.

15. Aaronovitch, Ben. Amongst Our Weapons (A Rivers of London Novel). Finished 4/16/22.

16. Hayes, Dade and Dawn Chmielewski. Binge Times: Inside Hollywood’s Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix. Finished 4/28/22.

17. Connelly, Michael. The Wonderland Murders & the Secret History of Hollywood: an Audible Original. Finished 4/29/22.

18. Kobabe, Maia. Gender Queer: a Memoir. Finished 5/3/22.

19. Weber, David. Mission of Honor: (Honor Harrington 12). Finished 5/11/22.

20. Alfageeh, Sara and Nadia Shammas. Squire. Finished 5/13/22.

21. Weber, David. A Rising Thunder (Honor Harrington 13). Finished 5/22/22.

22. Weber, David. Uncompromising Honor (Honor Harrington 14). Finished 5/29/22.

23. El-Mohtar, Amal and Max Gladstone. This Is How You Lose The Time War. Finished 6/24/22.

24. Wells, Martha. The Cloud Roads (Volume One of the Books of the Raksura). Finished 7/14/22.

25. Asaro, Catherine. The Jigsaw Assassin (Major Bhaajan 4). Finished 7/23/22.

26. MacFarlane, Seth. The Orville: Sympathy for the Devil. Finished 7/29/22.

27. Egan, Jennifer. A Visit from the Goon Squad. Finished 8/12/22.

28. Lee, Sharon and Steve Miller. Fair Trade: a Liaden Universe Novel. Finished 8/20/22.

29. Herron, Mick. Slow Horses. Finished 8/24/22.

30. QNTM (Hughes, Sam), There Is No Antimimetics Division. Finished 9/10/22.

31. Scalzi, John. The Dispatcher: a Novella. Finished 9/10/22.

32. Egan, Jennifer. The Candy House. Finished 9/17/22.

33. Scalzi, John. Murder by Other Means: a Dispatcher Novella. Finished 9/21/22.

34. Scalzi, John. Travel by Bullet: a Dispatcher Novella. Finished 9/28/22.

35. O'Connor, Joseph. Shadowplay: a Novel. Finished 10/2/22.

36. Fisher, Max. The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World. Finished 10/22/22.

37. Herron, Mick. Dead Lions (Slow Horses #2). Finished 10/28/22.

38. Haberman, Maggie. Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Finished 11/14/22.

39. Connelly, Michael. Desert Star: A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel. Finished 11/18/22.

40.  Wells, Martha. The Serpent Sea (Volume Two of the Books of the Raksura). Finished 11/22/22.

41. Herron, Mick. Real Tigers (Slow Horses #3). Finished 11/27/22.

42. Bryar, Colin and Bill Carr. Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. Finished 12/13/22.

43. Wells, Martha. The Siren Depths (Volume 3 of the Books of the Raksura.) Finished 12/21/22.

The longer version… (you may need to click to open this as a separate page depending on your email)

1.  Weber, David. Field of Dishonor: Honor Harrington 4). Finished 1/2/22.

I started this space opera series in December of 2021, and this one, #4, is the best so far because in it things happen to the protagonist, Captain Harrington, rather than just around her. In the first six months of 2022, I tore through 11 books in this series… not all of which merit a comment in what follows, although most of them do.

2. Weber, David. Flag in Exile (Honor Harrington 5). Finished 1/5/21.

Really good. Solid. The protagonist is still a superwoman, but the emphasis is now more on the woman than on the super. I’m going to take a break from this series for a bit… there are too many other books stacking up…

3. Weber, David. Honor Among Enemies (Honor Harrington 6). Finished 1/12/22.

OK, so I didn't take a break...

4. Weber, David. In Enemy Hands (Honor Harrington 7). Finished 1/22/22.

I’m actually reading lots of other books right now… nonfiction for the book about Shakespeare as a businessman that I’m writing, but these Weber novels are the ones I’m finishing.

5. Weber, David. Echoes of Honor (Honor Harrington 8). Finished 1/28/22.

6. Paul, Annie Murphy. The Extended Mind: the Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Finished 1/29/21.

Extraordinary science writing and synthesis of a wide array of research. Useful for my book. Provocative in general. If you’re looking for a thoughtful, accessible introduction to the corner of philosophy that is “extended mind,” this is the place to start.

7. Weber, David. Ashes of Victory (Honor Harrington 9). Finished 2/11/22.

Most disparate of the series with the least amount of time with the title character. Since the main villains from the enemy, the Peoples Republic of Haven (a.k.a. the “Peeps”), are no longer a threat at the end of this one, it’s a logical place to stop for a while.

8. Beyer, Kirsten & Mike Johnson. Star Trek: Picard. No Man's Land.  Finished 2/22/22.

A delightful audiobook that was released around the time of Season 2 of Picard and focuses on the relationship between 7 of 9 and Raffi. Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd perform the voices of their characters… so in many ways this is more of an old-style radio audio drama than a typical audiobook.

9. O'Farrell, Maggie. Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague. Finished 2/28/22.

A beautifully written tale of parental grief and what comes after. The Hamnet in this case is Hamnet Shakespeare, son of William Shakespeare who died at age 11 in Stratford, presumably of plague. Reading this was hard going because I knew how the story ended going in, but I'm glad I persevered. O'Farrell richly imagines what life in Stratford would have been like, how Shakespeare's family would have thought of his long absences as he worked in London, and how the survivors would have managed after Hamnet's death. Although people usually called Shakespeare's wife Anne, O'Farrell prefers the alternate, Agnes (pronounced "Ahn-yis") and creates in her a woman close to the elements, talented as a pruner of plants and maker of medicines, possessor of nearly magical sources of insight.

10. Gardner, Caleb. No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyper-Connected, Radically Conscious Economy. Finished 3/10/22.

Here's the blurb I wrote for my friend Caleb when he kindly sent me a review copy…

Individuals and companies promulgate fantasies of quick, painless change throughout our everyday lives and especially online. Listicles of life hacks, inexpensive smartphone apps to help you meditate, self-help books about tricking yourself into acquiring or losing habits, even camera filters that help you upgrade your look in an instant—all point to a happier life after a jump across a chasm separating the dreary old you from the new and improved you. Enter a reality check in Caleb Gardner’s No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyper-Connected, Radically Conscious Economy. For Gardner, change isn’t something you achieve: it’s an ongoing discipline, muscles to be built and exercised, because the next competitor, crisis, or catastrophe is only the next one, not the last. Gardner’s insightful and empathetic book has gems scattered throughout: “History is full of events that are disruptive not because no one saw them coming, but because of how entrenched routine and mindsets have become.” “The world is too complex to expect perfection of ourselves or of others… or to leave the right thing to chance.” “Companies need plans for what happens when they fail.” “Uncertainty is not a new phenomenon, but we have more information about what’s going on in the world than we ever have before. We know more about what we don’t know.” And, “this is why executives have fallen head over heels in love with data in the past decade: it provides a comfort blanket against ambiguity.” One of Gardner’s most useful distinctions is between the functions of leadership and management: “If leaders create chaos through the strategic deployment of dissonance, managers reduce it through weaving disparate chaotic themes back together into a cohesive whole.” Gardner started building his own change management muscles running social media during the Obama administration and went on to share his vision for chronically learning organizations embracing ongoing, difficult, important, rewarding, and profitable change ever since as the co-founder of 18 Coffees. This book is a window into the mindset Gardner inculcates for those not lucky enough to work with him directly. 

11. Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—And How to Think Deeply Again. Finished March 12.

This was an adept and well-written entry into a series of books on the same topic. If you’ve read the others (e.g., Daniel Levitin’s The Organized Mind), then you don’t need to read Hari, but Hari is a good place to start.

12. Weber, David. War of Honor (Honor Harrington 10). Finished March 21.

This one took me a while not only because I needed a break from the series but also because it was my last-thing-before-bed book. Also, at more than 800 pages it's a sprawling, Tolstoy-like mosaic... although the Tolstoy comparison is only about the length and scope rather than the characterization or moment-to-moment writing.

13. Aaronovitch, Ben. What Abigail Did That Summer (A Rivers of London Novella). Finished 3/2/22.

See #15, below.

14. Weber, David. At All Costs: (Honor Harrington 11). Finished 4/10/22.

A whopping 827 pages. These books are only getting longer and more complex. Like the Liaden series (#28 below), they are also impossible to read independently: at this point it’s like one gigantic novel. This was a stirring installment, and at the end I’m again feeling like I need a break from the series. I know I’ve said that before, so we’ll see how long it lasts. There are two more in this core series, but there are also what seem to be numberless spin-offs, anthologies, and prequels. I don’t know why I question my appetite for this series when I don’t when it comes to Star Trek or the MCU. Worth pondering… perhaps it’s because there is more internal variation with the latter?

Note: if my count is right, at the end of the 14th week of this year I’ve read 14 books, many of them quite hefty.

15. Aaronovitch, Ben. Amongst Our Weapons (A Rivers of London Novel). Finished 4/16/22.

As always, delightful. The protagonist, Peter Grant, becomes a father in the last chapter, after what might be  the longest pregnancy in the history of fiction. I’m surprised this series hasn’t made it to a streaming adaptation… although some quick Googling reveals it was optioned and in development pre- pandemic in 2019.

As with many series, I have trouble imagining somebody starting with Book 9.

16. Hayes, Dade and Dawn Chmielewski. Binge Times: Inside Hollywood’s Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix. Finished 4/28/22.

I know Dawn slightly, and I was excited to read this up-to-the-minute history of the streaming wars. It was a terrific read. Alas, it was also dated the moment it arrived because so much has happened and continues to happen in the world of streaming since April. I’ll read the updated and expanded version or the sequel.

17. Connelly, Michael. The Wonderland Murders & the Secret History of Hollywood: an Audible Original. Finished 4/29/22.

I adore Connelly’s fiction (as you’ll see below), and thought this multipart audio series about a 40 year old murder investigation in Laurel Canyon was just as good as his Harry Bosch books.

18. Kobabe, Maia. Gender Queer: a Memoir. Finished 5/3/22.

The best book I read in 2022. This is a gorgeous graphic novel that explains the non-binary, asexual experience from the inside. It reminded me of the David Foster Wallace book This is Water because it made me aware of the privilege I've enjoyed as a straight white guy with he/him pronouns... I've never had to defend or interrogate my gender, which is a luxury.

19. Weber, David. Mission of Honor: (Honor Harrington 12). Finished 5/11/22.

At less than 600 pages, this felt almost tidy compared to the sprawling nature of the last few. These are increasingly mosaic novels… Harrington is only one of many central characters. They’re still fun… particularly as I’m sick (with COVID) as I write this.

20. Alfageeh, Sara and Nadia Shammas. Squire. Finished 5/13/22.

Beautiful graphic novel recommended by my friend Raman Sehgal about a young girl from an oppressed tribe who joins the military to change her fortune and has subsequent adventures. One author (Alfageeh) is a Jordanian American woman, and the other (Shammas) is Palestinian American. A terrific read, one where girls wield swords right next to boys.

21. Weber, David. A Rising Thunder (Honor Harrington 13). Finished 5/22/22.

This one oddly overlaps with #12 for the first 100 pages. It also ends oddly with a wedding that looks like a setup for a big action sequence and then is... just a wedding. The action then segues to a meeting among military intelligence agents. A weird installment.

22. Weber, David. Uncompromising Honor (Honor Harrington 14). Finished 5/29/22.

The end of the series! …sort of. There are myriad anthologies, spin-offs, and short stories by Weber and other writers in the “Honorverse,” none of which I’m planning to read. The core series was good enough, and also just enough enough, for me.

23. El-Mohtar, Amal and Max Gladstone. This Is How You Lose The Time War. Finished 6/24/22.

Lyrical, quasi science fiction about agents on two different sides of a war—Red and Blue, both female—who fall in love through a bizarre correspondence.  Consistently interesting, if sometimes hard to follow.

After several weeks of not being able to focus after COVID, I'm so happy to have finished reading an actual book.

24. Wells, Martha. The Cloud Roads (Volume One of the Books of the Raksura). Finished 7/14/22.

Wells’ science fiction “Murderbot” series has been a favorite since I discovered it a few years back. The Raksura books are fantasy. What unites both series is Wells’ startling ability to imagine non-human points of view from the inside. With the Raksura books, there are several different species with distinct bodies and mind in addition to the shape-changing Raksura. It reminds me a bit of Robert Silverberg’s Majipoor series from the 1980s, which I loved. Terrific world-building.

25. Asaro, Catherine. The Jigsaw Assassin (Major Bhaajan 4). Finished 7/23/22.

Asaro dealt with the “you can’t start an epic sci-fi series in the middle” problem (see comments on David Weber and Ben Aaronovitch, above) by rebooting her sprawling Skolian Empire series in a tributary featuring one character. This is the fourth in that series, and it neatly combines action and romance.

26. MacFarlane, Seth. The Orville: Sympathy for the Devil. Finished 7/29/22.

The back story on this book (if I remember correctly) was that it was originally supposed to be an episode of the third season of the show (once it moved to Hulu from Fox), but that it was too expensive or complicated to shoot. You don’t need to know the show to enjoy this short book because it mostly focuses on the question of what happens to a person who (through a complex series of events) grows up in an entirely virtual environment that, disturbingly, is Nazi Germany.

The story is an intriguing combination of the movie The Truman Show and “Patterns of Force” a 1968 episode of the original Star Trek show where a Federation historian tries to impose order on a lawless world by adopting Nazi culture, only to discover that he can’t pull the efficiency out of the evil.

27. Egan, Jennifer. A Visit from the Goon Squad. Finished 8/12/22.

From the "if you liked Cloud Atlas then you'll love this" department. This is a series of interconnected stories told from multiple points of view and with multiples styles of telling: first person, omniscient narrator, second person... even a chapter told in PowerPoint. It also skips around in time, This is Us style, leaping into the near future at the end. I enjoyed it, even though it's hard to tell what everything adds up to by the last page. I read it because I heard interesting things about the sequel, which came out this summer, but I'm an inveterate completionist and didn't want to read #2 before #1.

28. Lee, Sharon and Steve Miller. Fair Trade: a Liaden Universe Novel. Finished 8/20/22.

The latest in the sprawling multi-strand narrative that is the Liaden Universe. This is the second book I've read in the Jethri Gobelyn stories, but apparently I've missed at least one other book if not two... which rather explains why there were moments when I didn't know quite what was going on. This is one of those series (see above) where it would be  hard to start now. When I first read these books around 2002 (with my tiny daughter sleeping on my shoulder as I rocked her), they'd already been around for at least 15 years. Now it has been considerably longer. Enjoyable and well-crafted space opera with more than a hint of romance.

29. Herron, Mick. Slow Horses. Finished 8/24/22.

I adored the AppleTV+ series based on this thriller, the first of a series. Usually, the book is better, but the adaptation was intensely faithful and in this rare case I think they’re on par. The edition I have had a bonus short story, which was also quite good. Since I knew how it all ended, it took me a while to get all the way through this book, but I’m glad I did in the end. I put the next in the series on hold at the library, so I’ll reverse the sequence for the second season of the show.

Herron is an adept writer, shifting among points of view easily. The smaller characters don’t get as much development on the page as they did onscreen, which maybe a point in favor of the series?

30. QNTM (Hughes, Sam), There Is No Antimimetics Division. Finished 9/10/22.

It’s so hard to describe this book, which my friend Bob Gilbreath recommended. An “anti-meme” is a concept that eludes memory, so the whole book is about things that slip out of consciousness. Author QNTM (a.k.a. Sam Hughes) is a prolific self-publisher, but that’s not a ding against him. His imagination is so out there that I can understand his choice to publish independently. If you have any affection for the work of Philip K. Dick, then you’ll find this interesting.

31. Scalzi, John. The Dispatcher: a Novella. Finished 9/10/22.

Audiobook version, read by Zachary Quinto. First of a series. Terrific SF whodunit set in a world where people who are murdered come back to life, naked and in their homes, a few minutes after being killed. There's never an explanation for how this came to be, which irks me mildly, but the story is great. Dispatchers are people who put gravely injured people to death, murdering them, so that they’ll pop up resorted to health a few minutes later. Tony Valdez, the protagonist, is such a Dispatcher.

32. Egan, Jennifer. The Candy House. Finished 9/17/22.

I was lucky to find a copy of this at my local library—a "Lucky Day" loan of 14 days with no renewal allowed. With this time pressure, I dug into the book on 9/16 and finished it today, 9/17. This is a quasi sequel to A Visit From the Goon Squad. "Quasi" because you don't have to have read the first book to understand this one.

I enjoyed this book more than Goon Squad, but I can't decide if that's because: a) it's a better book, b) because there's a learning curve to Egan's fiction (which shifts among different but connected perspectives), c) because there's a science fiction aspect to this one (where much of it takes place in the future and technology has made uploading your memories possible), or d) because my brain just feels a lot more alive since I finished Goon Squad a month ago... my lost post-COVID vagueness finally receding.  There were a few passages so provocative that I added them to my collection of quotations, which is pretty rare.

33. Scalzi, John. Murder by Other Means: a Dispatcher Novella. Finished 9/21/22.

Sequel to "The Dispatcher" (#31, above), also an audiobook read by Zachary Quinto. Another terrific listen. The relationship between Tony Valdez (the dispatcher) and Chicago PD Detective Nona Langdon deepens in this second whodunit, and it's terrific that it hasn't turned into a romance. Near as I can tell, these "Audible Originals" start as audiobooks and only then move into e-books and expensive hardcovers. I'm eager for the third, which is waiting in my Audible library.

34. Scalzi, John. Travel by Bullet: a Dispatcher Novella. Finished 9/28/22.

Third in “The Dispatcher" series (See #31 and #33, above), also an “Audible Original” audiobook read by Zachary Quinto—with no paper or ebook copy currently available. These light mysteries are perfect when doing chores… particularly our nightly mountain of dishes. I hope another is coming. One nice tweak in this installment is that it takes place during the COVID pandemic, which makes the whole dispatcher conceit more urgent.

35. O'Connor, Joseph. Shadowplay: a Novel. Finished 10/2/22.

I wanted this book to be more interesting than it turned out to be. I picked it up at the library because it's the monthly selection for the Folger Shakespeare Library's book club, which I follow but have not yet attended. This is a fictionalized biography of Bram Stoker, who today we know as the author of Dracula but in his own lifetime was known primarily as the manager of the Lyceum Theater in Victorian London, home to the great actor Sir Henry Irving. The relationships Stoker has with Irving, the actress Ellen Terry, and with his wife Florence are the backbone of the book. There are a few slight mystical elements concerning a ghost named Mina, but they never come fully into focus. I can't really recommend this book, but I did finish it.

Note: I'm tracking ahead of my usual when it comes to reading this year, although part of that is because I've included a few bigger comic books and some shorter audiobooks. The metrics aren't steady, but I'm satisfied that I'm reading enough so that my brain isn't atrophying.

36. Fisher, Max. The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World. Finished 10/22/22.

I devoted issue #36 (October 23 of this year) to this book, among other things. Short answer: a good read.

37. Herron, Mick. Dead Lions (Slow Horses #2). Finished 10/28/22.

Terrific sequel to Slow Horses (See book #29, above) and the basis for Season 2 of the Apple TV+ series that came out last month (December). The plot was intricate and surprising, and the characters nicely developed from the first book. So delightful that I immediately put #3 on reserve at my local library.

Note on Season 2 of the TV series: La Profesora and I finished the season last night (New Year’s Eve), and it’s much different than the book, unlike Season 1.

38. Haberman, Maggie. Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Finished 11/14/22.

Haberman is an astonishingly talented reporter, and I enjoyed this doorstop of a book from start to finish. Originally I did not want to buy this book because I feel queasy about paying money to support our international fixation on Donald Trump—a man who does not deserve this level of attention by any stretch. However, after standing in Target, reading a 30% discounted copy of the book while waiting for my daughter to finish shopping, I could not put it down and bought it. The frustrating thing about this book is that the people who read it have already made up their minds that Donald Trump was not and is not fit to be president, while the people who really need to read it, the people who support him, won’t.

39. Connelly, Michael. Desert Star: A Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel. Finished 11/18/22.

As gripping a page turner as always, with Connelly. I picked this up at Powell's yesterday morning and finished it today when I should have been packing to head to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving. This one was a bit of a combo-platter: two cases that didn't have much to do with each other aside from the investigators, so the book felt like it ended twice, one ending per case. I couldn't put it down.

This also feels like either the end or nearly the end of a five-book handoff between Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard as the protagonist of Connelly’s Los Angeles detective novels. Since Connelly sets them present day, Bosch, a Vietnam vet, is now in his late 70s or early 80s, ill, and not the action hero he used to be. I’ll be curious to see if the next one is just “a Renée Ballard novel.”

40.  Wells, Martha. The Serpent Sea (Volume Two of the Books of the Raksura). Finished 11/22/22.

The followup to #24 on this list.

41. Herron, Mick. Real Tigers (Slow Horses #3). Finished 11/27/22.

This series just gets better and better: the characters keep developing and changing from installment to installment, with the exception of Jackson Lamb (played by Gary Oldman in the Apple TV+ series), who is consistently mean and cutting in laugh-out-loud ways but whose interiority is as opaque as that of Sherlock Holmes.

The plot this time was as complex as the previous two books, but while the Maguffin is arbitrary (a la Hitchcock), the execution is flawless.

Side Note: there's a Slow Horses novella, "The List," which I downloaded and read on 11/14/22; that is set between Novel #2 and Novel #3, and there's a minute mention of it in #3, but it's not mandatory reading.

42. Bryar, Colin and Bill Car. Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon. Finished 12/13/22.

The second best book I read in 2022: this remarkable book organized my prior piecemeal understanding of how Amazon does what it does. Anybody in business should read this. I wish I had a time machine to send a copy to myself a few years ago. The narrative ends a few years ago, unsurprisingly, and I long for an expanded paperback or companion volume that digs into how Amazon used the principles the book articulates during COVID.

The real high endorsement is that I was lucky enough to check this out of my local library, but I’ll almost certainly buy a copy to mark up because it’s that valuable.

43. Wells, Martha. The Siren Depths (Volume 3 of the Books of the Raksura.) Finished 12/21/22.

The series continues to deliver compulsively readable fantasy. I started it yesterday afternoon, read until 1am, then finished it this morning when I should have been doing other things.

That’s this list!

I had expected to finish two more books before midnight on New Year’s Eve, but delightful holiday distractions intervened. Those two book—the first I’ll likely finish in 2023—are…

Wells, Martha. The Edge of Worlds (Volume 4 of the Books of the Raksura).

and…

Agrawal, Ajay, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. Prediction Machines: the Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence.

For anybody interested in AI, this is a must-read. Frankly, if you aren’t interested in AI then you should still read this because after you do you will be interested in AI. La Profesora kindly lent me her copy, and midway through reading I discovered (Arrgh!) that there’s an updated and expanded edition, but I wasn’t about to start over. There’s also a followup book, Power and Prediction: the Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, which I bought on the strength of the first and expect to read this month.

Next time: Lessons from CES 2023—let me know if you’ll be there!

Thanks for reading. See you next Sunday.