note: some reviews contain a near-minimal amount of spoilers to give an idea of what the book is about

9/10 Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien A beautifully written book which describes to adventurous journey of a small group of travelers trying to get rid of a ring of power by throwing it into a volcano deep into their enemie’s lands. The world building is also simply superb - one constantly feels like there is an ancient and magnificent background history of which one only catches glimpses through the eyes of the protagonists. This two-sentence summary does no justice to this amazing book, so here is one of the poems it contains:

“The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.”

7/10 The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, Ken Liu A collection of short stories, some which I found absolutely wonderful. In particular, All the Flavors and The paper mengaerie beautifully describe the experience of Chinese immigrants into the US, in the former case even with some really interesting historic background that is elaborated in the book’s footnotes

7.6/10 The name of the Wind- A great Fantasy book with good writing, some quite unique ideas in its world building and a captivating story. I don’t want to spoil more, just read the first one or two chapters online and see whether it’s your cup of tea.

8/10 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality What if Harry Potter was raised by an Oxford professor instead of Vernon Dursley? This book answers the question in the form of a 600’000 word fan-fiction in which Harry Potter tries to analyze magic scientifically, picks professor Quirrell as his mentor and philosophizes about how incredibly easy it would be to overthrow the wizard government. A really captivating and amusing read - I read the book three or four times

7.5/10 Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson A great read with narrators split between WW2 code-breakers & accomplices and on the other hand their grand-children 50 years down the line who are trying to build a regulation-free data haven and are now facing various challenges, from gold-smuggling operations to an investor who would just love to own a bigger share of their venture and are willing to sue them to the ground for it. The book is delightfully nerdy to a point where I sometimes nearly wondered whether the author had mysteriously been paid to write a book specifically for me.

7/10 In remembrance of earth’s past, Cixin Liu Pros: Science-fiction with some really, really cool concepts and descriptions of a human endeavour over an very long amount of time. It is hard to say more without spoiling half the trilogy, but it certainly makes for an interesting read Cons: I think the author is at times a cynic and some women are quite badly written

6.8/10 Stranger in a Strange Land A human gets raised by Martians and then manages to return to Earth by early adulthood. The martians are never really described - the book is about the man’s integration into human society, which is quite interesting given that he comes from a completely different cultural background. Also being raised by Martians apparently gives one telepathic abilities and a strong preference for polyamory.

7/10 Surely You are Joking Mr. Feynmann - A very amusing biography of the amazing Physicist Richard Feynmann in the form of first-person anecdotes

Nothing deep but fun reads

7/10 Artemis A quick and fun read of which I frankly remember little after a few months other than that is is a cool underdog-fighting-the-evil-crime-syndicate book which was written by Any Weir, the author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary

8/10 Circe A very neat, kind of feminist book describing some Greek mythology from the perspective of Circe, famous for being the witch who trapped Odysseus on her island.

7/10 There is no antimemetic division A short novel describing how an organization which aims to contain anomalous beings grapples with an entity that wrecks havoc only to those who remember its existence

Other short stories

Three worlds collide - A slightly disturbing but very much thought-provoking short story imagining how alien and human moral frameworks might differ

The last question - A sufficiently short Sci-Fi short story that I will say nothing other than that it kind of neat

Various recommendations for which I haven’t written a review yet

The man from the future

Palo Alto

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Meditations by Marc Aurel

The overstory

Cloud atlas

Project Hail Mary

Behave by Robert Sapolsky

Gentleman in Moscow