mid-2026 reading list

I'd consider myself an avid reader, having established a nightly reading habit over the last several years. I also follow various blogs using NewsBlur (which is blessedly self-hostable, though I don't currently do so; I could - and probably will - expand on why I have a soft spot for self-hostable technologies another time, though.)

Lest you think I'm some kind of ultra-literate snob, my media habits include video games (current: Metaphor: ReFantazio; recent: Divinity Original Sin 2, Slay the Spire 2, Cross Code) plus the occasional movie (recent: Sweet Bean) or show (current: Fullmetal Alchemist - a repeat watch, which is curious in that I feel I return to shows / movies a lot more than I do books, though I have no cold, hard data to prove it; recent: Odd Taxi).

All that said, this article will focus more on books: I'll go over some of my favourites from the last while. There's something about a book recommendation that is wholly unlike a recommendation for an article, or a show, or a video game: it's an assertion that sitting down with this particular pile of words is Worth It. Even as someone who loves a good game, there's something unique about the deep focus and engagement required for reading that sets it apart for me. Shows, movies, and games are too visual to leave so much to the imagination. Podcasts come closer, but they can also just wash over you, a sort of background noise to life. (Same with audiobooks.)

A good old-fashioned print book, though: you can't put it on in the background while you do errands, or run it at 1.5x speed. You have to set time aside and engage deeply, which is a rare gift in this world. There is, consequently, greater risk for the person recommending the book: you're putting yourself out there as someone who gave that focus and engagement to a pile of words, and who's now suggesting others should do the same.

Hope you enjoy at least one of these.

Addiction by Design

This book focuses on machine gambling, but after reading this you'll see slot machine mechanics at work everywhere in our modern technological landscape: infinite scroll, autoplay, loot boxes and microtransactions (deemed similar enough to gambling to be worth regulating!), push notifications...

Schüll explains in detail how careful manipulation of odds, feedback, sound, and myriad other small design decisions results in technologies designed to be addictive. Even if this seems self-evident now, it's not clear to me that it was self-evident at time of publication in 2012, and the deep dive is still fascinating and relevant.

There's an echo of The True Believer in her exploration of how addictive stimuli co-evolve with their captive audiences. Cults, extremist movements, machine gambling, free-to-play loot-box-driven games: each of these finds market fit in a specific personality type, ruthlessly optimises to exploit that niche, and evolves its design over time to maintain its hold. In turn, the audience becomes habituated to the stimulus, demanding more over time: more simultaneous lines / games, more juicy UI flourishes, more outrage, more microtransactions.

1491

Like many North Americans, I've been brought up to believe that the Americas were terra incognita prior to 1492: a vast, untouched wilderness, at best sparsely populated by a few roving descendants of some Bering Strait stragglers until Columbus discovered it.

This book dispels those notions with painstaking evidence that the Americas were neither sparsely populated nor particularly wild. Its inhabitants arrived earlier than previously supposed, and may have numbered in the tens of millions; they practiced widespread management of forests, herds, and other resources; they established complex civilisations with intensive agriculture and rich cultural practices.

(And yes: they also had rampaging warlords and bloody conflicts and all the other less savoury trappings of civilisation. The book is just as methodical in tearing down the "noble savage" myth.)

I love books that evoke alternate possible timelines: if the previous inhabitants of the Americas had not been vulnerable to smallpox, the world might well look quite different.

Moreover, this book is an excellent example of how science actually works. Mann presents clear evidence, but is also honest about ongoing disputes in the field. Many laypeople think of human knowledge and theories as just so: a sterile act of transmission through textbooks. I much prefer accounts that present science as a living process that is always, always asking: I have new information that doesn't fit my previous theory; what now?

Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young

I've always been somewhat fascinated by the hippie culture of the 60s and 70s and its many offshoots. There was this Cambrian explosion of weirdness: Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Timothy Leary, geodesic dome communes, gonzo journalists, the Summer of Love, even early pioneers of computing, all riding a wave of newly liberated thought and sexuality.

All of this unfolded against the backdrop of the Cold War (I have relatives-in-law who remember duck and cover drills in school!) and its various offshoot proxy wars, most notably the ill-fated Vietnam War. This, I must add, resulted in 50000 war resisters fleeing to Canada, which influx brought us such luminaries as William Gibson and Jane Jacobs; Canada has a storied tradition of serving as an escape valve for the excesses and cruelties of US policy.

But back to the book. Written by the son of two leaders of the Weather Underground, it details a childhood spent on the run from the FBI with his parents. The author's deep sense of moral ambiguity comes through clearly. What does it mean to be close to someone whose ideals you admire, yet whose methods you abhor?

Ian McDonald

I remember reading Brasyl and Desolation Road just after the first few books of Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC). Don't get me wrong: DCC is a fun romp, but it has all the subtlety of Schwarzenegger as Conan, and all the style that you would expect of writing blasted out at high speed with minimal editing. (I should know; I often write that way myself!)

By comparison, both of Ian McDonald's books offer up complex interwoven storylines spanning multiple lifetimes / time periods, with thought-provoking themes sprinkled liberally throughout: these are carefully crafted pleasures.

To give a taste, I'll just quote Cory Doctorow's review of Desolation Road:

Spanning centuries, the book includes transcendent math, alternate realities, corporate dystopias, travelling carnivals, post-singularity godlike AIs, geoengineering, and mechanical hobos, each integral to the plot.

Highly recommend.

Ted Chiang

Another sci-fi author who achieves a spectacularly high quality density: he has two short story collections to his name, and every story in both collections is amazing.

Musings on time, infinity, language, computation, theology, and other lofty topics weave together into surprisingly readable pieces. If Jorge Luis Borges and Philip K. Dick had a literary love child, he would be Ted Chiang.

Who is Government?

It seems that one of the many darkly comic punchlines of our post-truth era is that, when you lay off large numbers of food regulators, people shit themselves and die from tainted lettuce. Or jalapeños. Or blueberries. (All of which, by the way, I've eaten over here in Denmark in the past week with nary a thought to my intestinal fortitude.)

Turns out government does useful things, especially when it has the trust and resources to function well. Who knew? Well, to start with, the many fascinating public servants profiled in this book certainly know this, as do the prolific authors selected to tell their stories to a public that feels increasingly disillusioned with politics.

Two things I learned well during my time at Code for Canada: most of what government does has nothing to do with the political gridlock that makes the news; most public servants do indeed believe in serving the public. If public agencies could tell their stories half as effectively as Zohran Mamdani, it would be as engaging as this book. (And if they could only tell their stories half as effectively again, it would still be a massive improvement over the status quo, and help to close the perceived gap between the considerable expertise of public servants and those they serve.)

The Crisis of the Old Order: 1919-1933

This book filled a spot in my soul (or whatever my secular humanist conception of that would be) that was looking for a hopeful reference point from which to understand the current moment in US politics.

It chronicles the conditions that led to FDR's New Deal: the stock market crash of 1929, which brought down with it public confidence in business as a Force for Good; naked corruption in the executive branch (another reminder that authoritarians are not, and can never be, truly original in their mendacity); recovery from global pandemic (the Spanish flu, to be precise); and myriad other smaller shocks covered at length in the book.

A bit dry at times, as casual reads go, and maybe only of interest if you yourself have ties to the US. Still, I find these sorts of "history rhymes" reflections oddly soothing in uncertain and dismaying times. They remind me that terrible times often birth the seeds of renewal: leaders and movements that are strong, wise, kind, and - importantly - patient enough to weather the blunt stupidities of authoritarian rule.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives

Some places in the world have a cultural concept of comfort. Denmark has hygge, Japan has wabisabi and komorebi and ikigai, the Dutch have gezellig. True to form, North Americans have only the blandly corporate Hallmark watering-down of "contentment" and "coziness", which bring to mind neither the beauty of nature nor the warm glow of time spent with close friends and family, but rather the looming forced happiness of an AI-generated Coca Cola Santa Claus.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives is what you get when you combine hygge with culinary tradition: the idea that our worries, traumas, and confusions can be solved by connecting with our stomach-memory around cherished yet half-forgotten childhood meals. This is a deliciously wonderful concept indeed.

The Year of Living Biblically / Constitutionally

To most living, breathing, thinking people I believe (or hope, at least) that it is immediately obvious that inflexible literal interpretations of really old texts is a bad idea. Not content with this common-sense take, A. J. Jacobs sets out to drive this point home to great comic effect by living those literal interpretations for a full calendar year.

I'm not usually a fan of gimmick literature (year of this, 10 steps to that, yada yada), but this lands for me. Maybe it's his Sacha Baron Cohen-like dedication to form: he dresses, acts, thinks, lives and breathes the part, all with a keen self-awareness that what he's doing is, frankly, ridiculous.