Non-Fiction
Dark PR
First, Grant was kind enough to gift me a physical copy of this book when I said it wasn’t available at my local library. No request from him, just asked for my address and sent a book.
In this book the reader is provided with many frameworks to use when they think about the marketing efforts of the companies we interact with every day. From funding contradicting studies to disprove the ties between sugar and diabetes, to teaching that slavery provided useful skills thus was a helpful thing, to framing magical carbon capture as a solution to pollution so we don’t have to curb our purchasing, Ennis provides many ways to dig into the claims companies make to us to show how shallow they are.
If I have one regret about the book it’s that I haven’t done as good a job at applying the frames provided by Ennis to the world around me this year and then written about them.
Democracy at Work
Democracy at Work is all about radical democracy, giving only the workers that contribute to production a say in how the surplus of production is used. This would mean eliminating the ownership class (referred to as capitalists here) because all the workers contributing would be the owners, as long as they contributed.
Wolff does spend time addressing how companies formed with this structure would finance retirement, benefits, and even how they’d band together to help workers transfer industries as technology changed without workers needing to scramble for lost income.
For all the talk about democracy being the best thing, this type of radical democracy where workers get the only say is pilloried as fascism. After reading this book I wonder if that’s done by those with wealth so they can maintain their wealth without working.
Against Creativity
In Against Creativity, Oli Mould, looks at how creativity has been pushed by capitalism to mask making workers do more work for less pay. We don’t call it being underfunded, we say a department has to be “creative” with their work. We defund libraries and tell them that they’re not “creative” enough while their mandates suddenly include spaces for homeless people.
Mould makes a compelling case for how capitalism wants befriend creativity, as long as it serves business. Art that’s just a bit edgy to attract the right type of person downtown to contribute to the economy. Nothing that would call society to account though, this is subversive and pushed out of the sanitary creative life most of us encounter.
The Cost of Being a Girl
Yasemin Besen-Cassino takes a hard look at the wages girls earn and how the employment trends from the early teenage years set women up to earn far less than their male counterparts for their entire lives. For girls there is a very small window in their first teen years when they earn more than males, but then they continue to babysit where raises don’t happen. Boys often start in fast food or other service industries which may start lower, but often have established pay scale increases every year.
Besen-Cassino debunks the typical tropes that state the [[gender pay gap|gender wage gap]] comes down to training, as more women finish higher levels of education than men. But despite closing the main skill difference used to explain why women earn less, they continue to earn less.
From the retail jobs young women often work that make them purchase new clothes every season out of their wages, to the devaluing of childcare as work, women are systematically put down by a society run by men.
For more on misogyny read A Brief History of Misogyny.
Disappointing Reads
As I review my list of non-fiction books I’m reaching to find any that stand out. I read Slow Productivity by Cal Newport hoping I’d get a similar feeling as when I read Deep Work, but nope. Slow Productivity was fine, but mostly rehashed stuff you hear all the time if you’ve read about productivity. Don’t bother with it if you’ve read productivity books before.
I have similar feelings about Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish. I picked it up because I love his site Farnham Street but found the book underwhelming with the same comments I have for Slow Productivity. It hashes over a bunch of stuff I’ve already read on productivity.
I guess my take away for 2025 is that I need to stop reading productivity books because they don’t have much to say to me anymore. There is only so much you can maximize your life, and I’m clearly aware of all the strategies available and know which ones work for me and which ones don’t.
Fiction
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson is the biggest Fantasy author currently, and my reading reflects that. I completed four books by Sanderson this year. Defiant continues the Skyward Saga, in theory with the final book. Defiant is written a bit more towards the YA reader than some of his other series, but it’s still a great read.
Elantris is a great book looking at broken magic and the toll a broken world is taking on the people. We follow the prince who gets afflicted by a mysterious disease that plagues the residents of his nation. He’s thrown in with the other untouchable immortals wasting away in a formerly glorious city and then works to make their lives better with the time he has before he goes mad.
The Sunlit Man stays in Sanderson’s Cosmere universe, but bends towards Science Fiction where his other books are Fantasy. We meet Nomad, who I quickly figured out was a character I’d met in other Sanderson books but couldn’t figure out who it was till the end, as Nomad is dropped on a small planet that spins so fast with a sun so scorching hot that you must stay on the move or be burned up. Nomad must try and keep moving on the planet while also continuing to run from the bigger badder enemy that has him trapped on the world in the first place.
The Emporer’s Soul is a short story about a thief that can imbue the artifact’s of the world with the way things may have gone. She can take an abused table and with some writing and magic change it into a table that was cared for with meticulous grace it’s whole life. In this world that makes her a forger, where she forges art just to show that she can do so good a job you won’t notice. Upon her capture she must forge a new soul for a person in a short time, while also figuring out how to save her own life from betrayal.
Christopher Ruocchio
I found Christopher Roucchio this year as well, who like Sanderson likes to write epic tomes. I’ve started his Sun Eater Series with Empire of Silence and Howling Dark both of which were excellent reads. Ruocchio moves much slower than Sanderson’s writing, but his payoffs are just as good.
I have the whole series and plan to finish the last 4 books during 2025.
Quill and Still
I was introduced to Aaron’s writing via Mastodon this year and found Quill & Still very refreshing read. It’s an isekai story with Sophie being transported to a world where they encounter a huge surprise. This world just takes care of it’s people. A city isn’t a real city if it can’t provide for everyone’s basic needs even if people don’t work, and everyone contributes to the function of society.
When Sophie decides her chemistry background will fit with alchemy in the new world she’s astonished to see that the city will front all the costs for the business and provide a place for it to function. If she fails in the first year they bring in an established business person to help fix the issues. If that doesn’t work an the business still fails, they give you a standard house and help you find something else you’re good at. You don’t owe them anything as long as you do something to help the city survive.
A world that takes care of everyone regardless of wealth sounds like one I’d like to live in and I can’t wait for the next book.
Heaven’s River
Heaven’s River is book 4 in the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor. In this book we encounter a new civilization run by an AI in a massive doughnut habitat as we look for a lost “Bob”1. I’ve enjoyed every book in the series reading in more than once this year.
- Bob’s are autonomous AI space ships inhabited by the consciousness of the original Robert Johannson. They’re not all the same, and during the series they explore the personhood of AI. ↩︎
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