This year, I continued to devour fiction but expanded much of my non-fiction reading to papers and reports via my 2020 holiday present to myself, the Remarkable 2, which I highly recommend for kindred souls who enjoy writing notes while reading scientific literature.

I averaged just over 3 books per month in 2021, a bit lower than 3.7 per month in 2020 – but I also averaged 9.5 papers per month on the Remarkable or just over 2 per week, a number I look forward to increasing next year. I also published a paper of my own this year in ACM Queue entitled “Lamboozling Attackers: A New Generation of Deception”.

If you’re looking for more science fiction, speculative fiction, or non-fiction recommendations, check out my reading lists from prior years:

Fiction

Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Blindness by José Saramago

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter by César Aira

The Fifth Science by Exurb1a

How Long ’til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson

Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Persephone Station by Stina Leicht

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis

The Red by Linda Nagata

Runtime by S.B. Divya

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge

A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Non-Fiction

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature by Mary Midgley

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.

How to Change by Katy Milkman

Narrative Economics by Robert J. Shiller

Probable Impossibilities by Alan Lightman

Stealing the Corner Office by Brendan Reid

Subtract by Leidy Klotz

The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

Think Again by Adam Grant

The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel