For 2021, I want to cover specific themes with reading. I expect these themes will be generally consistent year-to-year.

In a change from past years, I am only tracking books that I complete.

Themes

• Human Factors, Technical Failure, Ethics in Engineering
• Software Development, Software Teams
• Sociology, Race, and Civic Engagement in the United States
• Essays, Fiction, Narative Non-Fiction, and Travel Literature
• Photography and Art
• Open Source Intelligence
  • Cartography
  • GIS data
  • Satellite imagery

Not every book will fit into these themes. That’s OK. I’m looking to establish some general expectations based on my interests. I’ve been interested in each of these themes for multiple years, even if I haven’t had the exact term to place on it.

I also expect to engage in diversity of authors and subjects. The simple parameter around that is no more than two consecutive books by white men.

Completed books

Sociology, Race, and Civic Engagement in the United States

• Thick, by Tressie McMillan Cottom
  • Completed: Jan. 26, 2021

Photography and Art

• Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg
  • Completed: Jan. 29, 2021
• The Strange Library, by Haruki Murakami
  • Completed: Feb. 15, 2021

Essays, Fiction, Narrative Non-Fiction, and Travel Literature

• Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keene
  • Completed: Feb. 14, 2021
• The End of Everything, by Katie Mack
  • Completed: March 2, 2021
• Linchpin, by Seth Godin
  • Abandoned: March 28, 2021
  • There was a lot in this breezy book I found problematic, specifically, the breezy overlooking who has to take shit jobs for minimal security in favor of relentless individualism that will make capitalism marginallysurvivable for some
  • Given a lot of the other reading I’ve done in the past few years, I found it incredibly difficult to respect anything else about the book because of this breezy look-past
• Birth of a Bridge, by Maylis de Kerangal
  • Completed: May, 2021
• By Night in Chile, by Roberto Bolaño
  • Completed: May 2, 2021
• Known and Strange Things, by Teju Cole
  • Completed: Nov. 29, 2021
• Every Day is for the Thief, by Teju Cole