JDU

Reading

Reading

Permanent Bookshelf

The books here are more or less permanent fixtures on my bookshelf. They’re books i’ll go back and read extracts, or the entirety all over again at some point throughout a year.

In most cases it’s because something about the books feeds into the way I think, or feel, or operate, or contain something important to me. All of these books I would recommend others reading, but with a healthy recognition that these choices are intensely personal ones and you may not feel the same way about them as I do.

  • A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold

  • Seven Fallen Feathers - Tanya Taladega

  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Persig

  • Suttree - Cormac McCarthy

  • The Summer Book - Tove Jannson

  • Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein

2024 Reads

  • The Oil Painters Color Handbook - Casey

  • Rendering in Pen and Ink - Guptill

  • Horus Rising - Dan Abnett

2023 Reads

  • The Summer Book - Tove Jansson

  • A Winter Book - Tove Jannson

  • The Other Wind - Ursula K. Le Guin

  • Islands - Alistair Macleod

  • Notes from an Island - Tove Jansson

  • The Secret of Skeleton Island Robert Arthur

  • Wintering - Katherine May

  • To Hold Up the Sky - Cixin Liu

  • The Book of the New Sun Vol. 1 - Gene Wolfe

  • The Book of the New Sun Vol. 2 - Gene Wolfe

  • An Elegant Puzzle - Will Larson

  • Crafting Interpresters - Robert Nystrom

  • Notes from an Island - Tove Jannson

  • The Word for World is Forest - Ursula K. Le Guin

  • The Little Learner - Friedman

  • Norwegian Wood - Lars Mytting

  • Spike - Jeremy Farrar

  • Island - Alastair Macleod

  • Where the water lilys grow - Lawrence

  • Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature - Margaret Atwood

  • Traveling Light - Tove Jansson

  • To Hold Up the Sky - Cixin Liu

  • Wintering: The Power of Rest - Katherine May

  • Norwegian Wood - Lars Mytting

2022 Reads

  • Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City - Tanya Talaga

  • The Left Hand of Darkness - Le Guin, Ursula K.

  • Maledictions

  • The Dispossessed - Le Guin, Ursula K.

  • The Paper Menagerie - Ken Liu

  • Citadelle - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Other Years

  • Wind, Sand and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  • What If? - Randall Munroe

  • The Pragmatic Programmer - Multiple Authors

  • The Complete Works - H.P. Lovecraft

  • The Better Angels of our Nature - Steven Pinker

  • The Art of Computer Programming: Vols 1-3 - Donald Knuth

  • Fire Season - Connor Phillips

  • Rising Steam - Terry Pratchett

  • The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

  • Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health - Laurie Garrett

  • The Minimum Description Length Principle - Peter D. Grunwald

  • The Coming Plague - Laurie Garrett

  • Textbook of International Health - Ann-Emanauelle Birn

  • Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

  • The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams

  • Taran Wanderer - Lloyd Alexander

  • The Pragmatic Programmer - Andy Hunt

  • Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

  • The Ocean at the end of the Lane - Neil Gaiman

  • The Jokes Over - Ralph Steadman

  • Nation - Terry Pratchett

  • Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett

  • The Book of Ti’ana - Rand Miller

  • The Book of D’ni - Rand Miller

  • Eric - Terry Pratchett

  • Sourcery - Terry Pratchett

  • The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett

  • The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson

  • Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams

  • Python Essential Reference - David Bazley

  • Kingdom of Fear - Hunter S. Thompson

  • Concrete Mathematics - Ronald Graham

  • A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

  • Programming in Objective-C - Stephen G. Kochan

  • The Shackleton Voyage - Roland Huntford

  • Making Money - Terry Pratchett

  • The Book of Atrus - Rand Miller

  • Assassin’s Apprentice - Robin Hobb

  • The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett

  • Hackers Delight - Henry S. Warren Jr.

  • Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter S. Thompson

  • The Truth: Stage Adaptation - Stephen Briggs

  • Surely You’re Joking My Feynman - Richard Feynman

  • The Story of Commodore - Brian Bignall

  • The Histories - Herodotus

  • Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett

  • The Dark Side of the Sun - Terry Pratchett