Novelist and author of twelve books including Foundry, Bandwidth and Cumulus; writes a monthly book-recommendation newsletter.
loved
Trust by Hernan Diaz is an onion of a novel in which every chapter peels back a layer to reveal yet more beneath. Following the meteoric rise of a Wall Street financier in the early 20th century, the intricately plotted story will seduce you, transport you, stimulate you, mislead you, and, ultimately, move you.
His annual round-up collecting the books he recommended month by month during 2025.
Statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who writes the long-running blog Three-Toed Sloth and the Bactra Review of books.
liked
Mind candy: the trials and tribulations of the mid-level Canadian diplomat who becomes humanity's first accredited representative to the multiple much-more-advanced-than-us alien species with whom we turn out to share a wormhole nexus.
His monthly "Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur" post for December 2014 — the books he read that month and feels he can recommend.
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Hardware, services4 years
Software5 years
Podcasts, courses, other8 years
Books25 years
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.