Hampus
Agent Sonya is another wonderful Ben Macintyre book - wonderful language, the stupidity of states, and a firsthand account inside the world of spies.
Agent Sonya, or her real name Ursula Kuczynski, was born in 1907 and became a committed communist shaped by Weimar instability and a fervent anti-fascist. Her life spanned the time from communism's rise to its fall. She was plotting assassinations of Hitler, smuggling the Manhattan Project's secrets to Stalin, and ended up brushing up with the likes of Ho-Chi Minh.
The book took the reader from Shanghai → Poland → Switzerland → the UK → East Germany, and was an amazing account of each time and place.
The most fascinating thing was how she, on one end, was larger than life, and on the other was a mom and "domestic housewife" (especially in the eyes of the countries she spied on).
As all Ben Macintyres I would recommend it!
Strangers is about Belle Burden's marriage falling apart one day, when her husband walks out on her as COVID dawns on New York. It is vulnerable, raw, and painful to read, but it also shines the light on the societal issue of dependency of stay-home-women quitting their careers and allowing their men to “run the finances”. Worst of all, how other men think it is ok to behave like assholes.
Marriage might end, love might falter, but creating structures of dependency and fear will never be healthy for a relationship.
Belle happens to be a financially and structurally extremely privileged person, but it is a reminder than even under these circumstances being shunned or not believed is the worst that can happen to a person.
Mark Gober has summarized all science research on paranormal/psi/ESP the last century in this book. It is an amazing feat and it asks one clear question; if ANY of the research is right, we can't use the materialist model to explain how time, consciousness, and people work.
Sadly, it is not an enjoyable book to read. Page by page, it quickly states different researchers, famous people, and reports; all to just get the reader to notice that we can't ignore this. Intentions are perfect, the experience isn't.
I haven't changed my mind: I still think we're part of the big whirlpool of consciousness, and it isn't just an epiphenomenon and emergent property of a lot of neurons going about their day. I can't explain it tho :D
Iran is a dichotomy - ancient impressive the Persian culture and strive combined with the last 70 days of oppression and dictatorship. In The Lion Women of Tehran, we follow two girls in an Iran opening up and being more positive to women, and... then collapsing “to the medieval ages” during the story.
Iran is still today in turmoil and going back and forth between more religious fundamentalist or more open. People are on the streets and the government is crushing them.
The world needs more Lion Women!
Ryan Holiday is amazing at picking big and everlasting subjects, such as courage or ego, and writing a book filled with great quotes and views on the subject. In Perennial Seller, he attempts to do the same, but the problem is that the book feels like more like a bunch of blog posts and some oppose each other (“spend almost all your energy on the craft and not marketing it” and then “marketing, building a platform, constantly selling your work is the biggest difference between success and oblivion.”)And, the list of advice is more or less: 1. Write a great book A: pick a niche subject, know your audience, have a strong view point. 2. Write a great book B: work on it a lot, you need an editor, it will take time and a lot, lot, lot of energy. 3. Market the hell out of it - and use new tactics, reach out, build a platform of followers, etc, etc, etc (and a lot of other good, but fairly generic Seth Godin-esque tips.)The book does have wonderful quotes from artists alive and long gone, and it is an easy read, but I would say that a book about writing ([b:Bird by Bird 12543 Bird by Bird Anne Lamott https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631772636l/12543.SY75.jpg 841198]) and one of Godin's books probably solves the problem better.
Why Fish Don't Exist is a combined biography of David Starr Jordan, taxonomist and later president of Stanford, and the author's thought and anxieties - and how they intertwine. Jordan has as many “grandiose men” very dark sides when he finally gets to power (eugenics, power hungry, no moral), and also a crass view on science and life to “bring about a better world.”
I must say that I love how Lulu Miller writes - it is whimsical, floral, and sometimes funny - blended with scientific, dark, and to the point. Wonderful!
After I Do asks the question “how does love work in Modernity?” Marriage, living apart, divorce, “friends with benefits,” living alone, late-life love, and many more variants. How are we to expect our life with someone else. It is a nice read - and not on the nose-philosophy while it still asks questions.
Oliver Burkeman is a refreshing style to the self-help literature with his British wry style and skeptical outlook on everything. In The Antidote, he reasons, and as a participatory journalist, experience different ways of approaching “holding a negative.” Meaning that instead of trying to be happy by ignoring the issues, or even worse hiding ones fears and worries in different kinds of numbing, one should approach the darkest thoughts. He looks at Stoicism, Buddhism, pondering death, ego-death, and generally reasoning about insecurity and goal-drivenness. The conclusions are: 1. Learn to handle uncertainty and uncomfort. [life] is like a plant than a jewel; something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility2. If you fear something, you must come to terms with it - and ideally approach it. If you fear rejection, then try to chat up people in a park. If you fear being seen as a fool, shout out the name of each tube station as it approaches. 3. Contemplate your finals days and regrets and ask what you failed at to get a touch or mortality and how to spend your time: Imagine you are eighty years old (...) and then complete the sentence “I wish I'd spent more time on...” and “I wish I'd spent less time on...” This turn out to be surprisingly effective way to achieve mortality awareness.All in all, I would recommend [b:Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts 205363955 Meditations for Mortals Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts Oliver Burkeman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1718696458l/205363955.SY75.jpg 211382681] more.
Wild Dark Shore - as both previous McConaghy novels I've read - are DARK but in the darkness is a light of love and a reason to persevere through global or personal grief.
As always, the innocence of animals and nature, and the crushing force of the climate crisis are core is the big undercurrent of the story. What I like though, is that she doesn't write “CliFi” - the main story is about people and their personal tragedies, and their love for something bigger than themselves.
A book about time travel, knights & dragons, and of everlasting love feels like a hard thing to pull off - but Harrow does it. I really liked The Everlasting and not only because I wanted to “figure out the mystery” or keep fingers crossed that the characters won, but that I genuinely liked every single page and turn of the story.
The book has many brutalities and horrors, and is finger pointing, and most of all I would say: I can see a lot of people who won't enjoy reading it. I sure did!
The craziest thing about The Women of the Copper Country is that it is based on real life events! Hearing how cruel the copper-bosses were to the people who risked their lives going into coal mines, with the risk of their lives and limbs, and still not being paid or taken care of well, was a harrowing.
Mary Doria Russel has made it again - writing a book about a complex situation, but from a human and curious view. The book is wonderful in the characters, relationship, but naturally also of the trueness of the story.
Truth is stranger than fiction!
Colditz was a prison castle in Nazi Germany during the war, where the most “difficult prisoners” were held and Ben Macintyre gives an amazing account of all the people - on both sides - and their very, very unique personalities. The book covers the many escape attempts and many of them are truly astounding - it is a truly entertaining and interesting read.
At the same time, the book covers the many complexities of the times - structural racism, kind and protective Germans, spies of all its kinds, etc, etc.
Ben Macintyre reads the books in the most amazing way so I would recommend listening to it.
The only reason I don't give it five stars, is that there isn't a “main character” so the story constantly changes and there are quite a big role list to learn.
The sequel to The Sparrow, which is an “anthropology book,” explores the philosophy of religion, with the main story being the trauma experienced by the main protagonist. Children of God follows the protagonist and their “healing journey,” and this book explores themes of language and colonization, as well as philosophical reflections on religion.
Where the first novel was a story of discovery and loss, this one is about endurance - about what happens when survivors must live with the aftermath of contact, faith, and failure. The book doesn't only have a classical “sci-fi” you-don't-understand-aliens that makes you reflect, but also amazing quotes about faith, love, and suffering. Two favorites:
“Love is a debt, she thought. When the bill comes, you pay in grief.”
“You know, I've always thought it was a tactical mistake for God to love us in the aggregate, when Satan is willing to make a special effort to seduce each of us separately.”
1929 is a year most people relate to and know it was “the market crash.” What Sorkin has done by going through an enormous amount of personal letters, diaries, and general information is to explain it blow-by-blow from the people's view.
Sorkin explains how debt was the real accelerant for the crash. Investors were buying stocks on a 90% margin, turning small dips into catastrophes. The contagion spread not because people owned bad assets, but because they owned them with borrowed money. That, plus the hubris that “the market would always go up” and that the general public started wildly speculating (and were taken advantage of by pools of smart(er) bankers), made the crash much wider than just Wall Street.
Even if it was interesting, following “the big men of Wall Street” was still too much for my taste in reading.
Wow - little did I think I would enjoy a book on supply chains and civilization's dependence on sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. The amazing Material World does just that; it makes what is abundant, cheap, and “boring” very, very relevant.
Some ways to see these mighty six:
Sand: It sounds mundane, but it underpins glass, concrete, and silicon chips. For example, quartz sand → silicon → semiconductors. (Also: concrete uses sand + cement + iron reinforcement to build infrastructure (buildings, roads) so civilisation's built-form depends on it.)
Salt: Again, seems basic, but salt has huge industrial roles: in chemicals, manufacturing, and preserving food,
Iron: The backbone of steel, infrastructure, transport, buildings, machines.
Copper: Vital for electricity, wiring, electronics, the “nervous system” of modern society.
Oil: The classic industrial fuel and feedstock. It's deeply embedded in modern life — energy, plastics, transport, agriculture.
Lithium: The material emblematic of the clean-energy transition: batteries, electric vehicles, storage.
What I really liked were some non-obvious things - like how much we need derivatives of oil to drive the green transition. And it is clear after reading it that modern life is highly dependent on these six foundational materials, and the green transition (and build out of AI, etc) is all dependent on increasing the velocity of material extraction (and recycling).
The Devils felt like being in the midst of a hack-and-slash DnD campaign, which was very entertaining but also a bit shallow.
I ended up giving the book four stars, and not less, because I was pulled into it and couldn't stop being pulled back. And, like all Abercrombie books, it has a couple of golden quotes and one-liners.
I'm not great with novels, and People of the Book is essentially a collection of novels sharing one story. The overarching plot is non-fiction - how a Spanish-Jewish prayer book got handled over southern Europe in the 15th-19th century to finally be discovered in Sarajevo during the Balkan conflict of the 90s. Each story was interesting and well written, but as each one has new characters, it didn't work for me.
What I appreciated most in House of Huawei was how it frames Huawei not just as a telecom giant, but as a mirror of China's own rise. The book traces the company's growth from a scrappy startup into one of the world's most sophisticated technology players, showing how much of its success stems from relentless engineering, long-term investment, and state-aligned strategy. Fascinating to see it different forms of ownership and governance, and the family members' involvement.
The book illustrates how geopolitics shapes the fortunes of global companies. Huawei's trajectory—from admired supplier to embattled symbol of U.S.–China rivalry—underscores that business outcomes often depend less on market dynamics than on shifting political winds.
Even if Stay True is a memoir, it's unclear if it is a memoir of the author, the author's best friend Ken, or the pain of coming into adolescence and one's identity in the world. Ken dies in a horrible attack, and that shapes the memories of him and the friendship itself. The book beautifully talks about Ken, but also friendship as a concept.
Derrida remarked that friendship's driver isn't the pursuit of someone who is just like you. A friend, he wrote, would ‘choose knowing rather than being known.' I had always thought it was the other way around.
It is easy to think of the US and China as opposites, but Dan Wang does a great job in showing the similarities and differences. Both are pragmatic, materialistic societies with a “get-it-done” mindset, strong national pride, and admiration for technological prowess.
But, naturally, there are huge differences. Dan Wang gives each state a moniker to highlight it: China operates as an “engineering state”, emphasizing rapid, large-scale infrastructure and social projects—often at human or environmental cost. The U.S. is a “lawyerly society”, characterized by procedural caution, litigation, and slower progress. The strangest thing is that in the US, people are considered important, but the more wealthy you are, the more. In China, the heads of the regions are measured in numbers: jobs, construction projects, companies, etc.
There are also two amazing chapters on the One Child Policy and Zero Covid in China. Those were two that most clearly show how China's method isn't working. They might build more and have more equality built in, but if they keep having top-down control, people will leave or at least not flourish.
I felt it was an amazing book to understand how both countries are failing in their ways.
Both nations are on a spectrum: one excels in execution but falters in freedom; the other protects rights but struggles to build. He suggests an optimal synthesis—a US that builds more, balanced by legal safeguards, and China that governs with more procedural and cultural restraint.
Blindsight is “hard science fiction,” meaning it wants to discuss science-based concepts. The main question in the book is “Is being conscious a waste of energy?” The book is dense, seriously so, and I think to a degree where Peter Watts wants to sound too smart.
The effect is that the book has too many concepts (minduploading, gene editing from birth, and most of all - why did he have vampires?), and not very interesting characters, but they serve as perspectives on the main question. And, the story is just “humans' first contact with a very alien alien.”
I wouldn't say the book isn't worth reading, but I think it would have worked as a short novella.
Prisoners of Geography is a fast and accessible introduction to geopolitics. Tim Marshall argues that geography—mountains, rivers, ports, and resources—shapes nations' choices more than ideology or leadership.
Reading it, one understands why Russia can't have Ukraine to join NATO or why a shoreline needs bays that support harbors (for example, Africa's fragmented rivers and lack of natural harbors have slowed development).
One big takeaway is that geography isn't destiny, but it's sticky! Technology (railways, satellites, pipelines) can mitigate constraints but rarely erases them.
Russ Cook wasn't the kid or young adult you'd think would get anywhere, but in jail. But, he found long-distance running and did crazy feats of endurance; the most extreme running from Africa's southern tip to the northern point.
The more-than-one-year run through sandstorms, kidnappings, food poisoning, and more shows that people can do extraordinary things when they put their minds to it. The book also raises questions about happiness: Is it affluence or a community?
The book is a perfect audiobook for long-distance runs :)