🔖 Good Reads
Some of the books I've read in recent years.
My favourite genres are (crime) novels, history, politics, and science. In terms of book formats, I like e-books. I am quite active on Goodreads, you can find ratings and reviews (of some books) there.
2023
It's getting insanely hard to finish reading a book during the final year of my PhD. Though sometimes a book is not meant to be finished, I like the feeling of completing something I've started.
- "She and her cat" (2013) by Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa
Unfinished:
- "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (1883) by Friedrich Nietzsche
- "The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb" (1992) by George Feifer
2022
My cat got sick and passed away in October.
- "How do you live" (1937) by Genzaburo Yoshino
- "Strange weather in Tokyo" (2013) by Hiromi Kawakami
- "What I talk about when I talk about running" (2007) by Haruki Murakami
2021
I spent most of my time writing conference and journal papers. The year might have been uneventful had I not contracted shingles shortly after mom's birthday. The pain was excruciating but thankfully did not lead to postherpetic neuralgia. My list of half-read books is growing.
- "The golden hairpin #3" (2014) by 侧侧轻寒
- "The golden hairpin #4" (2015) by 侧侧轻寒
- "Speculative everything" (2013) by Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby
- "70-year-old death bill" (2012) by Miu Kakiya
- "The gymnasium murder" (2012) by Yuugo Aosaki
- "Lesson of the evil #1" (2010) by Yusuke Kishi
- "Lesson of the evil #2" (2010) by Yusuke Kishi
2020
It was an unprecedented year. Some people even called it the year of cancelled futures. However, the fact that I was only mildly inconvenienced in a few aspects of life made me realise the unequal impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Undoubtedly, I was both lucky and privileged. I stayed almost the entire year with my parents, and read a dozen of books.
- "If cats disappeared from the world" (2018) by Genki Kawamura
- "The ride of a lifetime" (2019) by Robert Iger
- "Scale" (2017) by Geoffrey West
- "Creativity, Inc." (2014) by Ed Catmull
- "The death and life of great American cities" (1961) by Jane Jacobs
- "Mendeleyev's dream" (2001) by Paul Strathern
- "Steve Jobs" (2011) by Walter Isaacson
- "To Pixar and beyond" (2016) by Lawrence Levy
- "Malice" (1996) by Keigo Higashino
- "Penance" (2009) by Kanae Minato
- "Growth" (2019) by Vaclav Smil
- "Confessions" (2008) by Kanae Minato
- "Einstein" (2007) by Walter Isaacson
- "Battle royale" (1999) by Koushun Takami
- "Love for imperfect things" (2016) by Haemin Sunim
- "Putin: Innenansichten der macht" (2015) by Hubert Seipel
- "Antifragile" (2012) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- "AI superpowers" (2018) by Kai-Fu Lee
- "Message to Adolf #1" (1983) by Osamu Tezuka
- "Message to Adolf #2" (1983) by Osamu Tezuka
- "The Putin interviews" (2017) by Oliver Stone
- "Energy: A beginner's guide" (2006) by Vaclav Smil
- "Will my cat eat my eyeballs?" (2019) by Caitlin Doughty
- "Poison daughter holy mother" (2016) by Kanae Minato
- "All for N" (2010) by Kanae Minato
- "Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin" (2010) by Timothy Snyder
- "Letter" (2003) by Keigo Higashino
- "Maus: A survivors' tale #1" (1991) by Art Spiegelman
- "Maus: A survivors' tale #2" (1991) by Art Spiegelman
- "Samsung rising" (2020) by Geoffrey Cain
- "The Nuremberg trials" (2010) by Paul Roland
- "Japanese death poems" (1985) by Yoel Hoffmann
- "Anne Frank" (1947) by Anne Frank
- "21 lessons for the 21st century" (2018) by Yuval Noah Harari
- "Permanent record" (2019) by Edward Snowden
- "Born a crime" (2016) Trevor Noah
- "The origins of political order" (2011) by Francis Fukuyama
- "A night to remember" (1955) by Walter Lord
- "Le petit prince" (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- "The night trilogy #1" (1956) by Elie Wiesel
- "The devotion of suspect X" (2005) by Keigo Higashino
- "Invisible women" (2019) by Caroline Criado Pérez
- "Tuesdays with Morrie" (1997) by Mitch Albom
- "Political order and political decay" (2014) by Francis Fukuyama
- "Destined for war" (2017) by Graham Allison
- "White fragility" (2018) by Robin DiAngelo
- "Lies my teacher told me" (2018) by James W. Loewen
- "Astrophysics for people in a hurry" (2017) by Neil deGrasse Tyson
- "An encouragement of learning" (1876) by Yukichi Fukuzawa
- "I was a kamikaze" (1972) by Ryuji Nagatsuka
- "To kill a mockingbird" (1960) by Harper Lee
- "Autonomy" (2018) by Lawrence D. Burns
- "11-character murder" (1987) by Keigo Higashino
- "Salvation of a saint" (2008) by Keigo Higashino
- "Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world" (2019) by David Epstein
- "The name of the game is a kidnapping" (2002) by Keigo Higashino
- "Why we sleep" (2017) by Matthew Walker
- "Grave of the fireflies" (1967) by Akiyuki Nosaka
- "The making of the atomic bomb" (1986) by Richard Rhodes
- "Meeting in the dark" (2002) by Otsuichi
- "A midsummer's equation" (2011) by Keigo Higashino
- "Naoko" (2011) by Keigo Higashino
- "Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of WWII" (1999) by John W. Dower
- "The night is short, walk on girl" (2006) by Tomihiko Morimi
- "The problem with socialism" (2016) by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
- "The case against socialism" (2019) by Rand Paul
- "Bức xúc không làm ta vô can" (2015) by Đặng Hoàng Giang
- "Death in midsummer" (1953) by Yukio Mishima
- "Another" (2009) by Yukito Ayatsuji
- "Another episode S/O" (2016) by Yukito Ayatsuji
- "Second sister" (2017) by Chan Ho-kei
- "The golden hairpin #1" (2014) by 侧侧轻寒
- "The golden hairpin #2" (2015) by 侧侧轻寒
2019
The second year of my Master's degree was exhilarating beyond words. I was consumed by all the new experiences and got burned out quite terribly at the end of December. A few times, I wished for a long holiday in a faraway place to chill and spend all day reading.
- "Alibaba: The house that Jack Ma built" (2016) by Duncan Clark
- "Bad blood" (2018) by John Carreyrou
- "Aiming high - A biography of Masayoshi Son" (2013) by Atsuo Inoue
- "A higher loyalty: Truth, lies, and leadership" (2018) by James Comey
- "Educated" (2018) by Tara Westover
- "Kissinger" (2005) by Walter Isaacson
- "GOTH" (2002) by Otsuichi
- "Black fairy tale" (2001) by Otsuichi
- "The things you can see only when you slow down" (2012) by Haemin Sunim
- "Peace in every step" (1990) by Thích Nhật Hạnh
2018
"My goal is not to read books this year" - That was what I told myself at the beginning of 2018, and somehow I managed to stick to this stupid resolution for precisely six months. Around June, I felt furious at myself for different reasons. While it was tempting to crawl under a blanket and frame everything in the worst possible light, I chose to get lost in books.
- "Interaction design for complex problem solving" (2003) by Barbara Mirel
- "HCI models, theories, and frameworks" (2003) by John Millar Carroll
- "The shape of design" (2012) by Frank Chimero
- "Start with why" (2009) by Simon Sinek
- "Sapiens: A brief history of humankind" (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari
- "White" (2008) by Kenya Hara
- "Designing with the mind in mind" (2010) by Jeff Johnson
- "Kira-Kira" (2004) by Cynthia Kadohata
- "Homo Deus: A history of tomorrow" (2017) by Yuval Noah Harari
- "The future of humanity" (2018) by Michio Kaku
- "Factfulness" (2018) by Hans Rosling
- "Darwin comes to town" (2018) by Menno Schilthuizen
- "What happened" (2017) by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- "The plot to destroy democracy" (2018) by Malcolm W. Nance
2017
My first year in Sydney went by in a blink of an eye. There was something tranquil about living alone in a new city, such as taking a long walk under the blue sky or sipping a hot cup of flat white while browsing through a book.
- "Dream of the red chamber" (1791) by Cao Xueqin
- "On China" (2011) by Henry Kissinger
- "Giấc mơ Mỹ - Đường đến Stanford" (2016) by Huyền Chip
- "Mao Zedong: A political and intellectual portrait" (2006) by Maurice J. Meisner
- "Ho Chi Minh: A life" (2000) by William J. Duiker
- "Korea: The impossible country" (2012) by Daniel Tudor
- "Killing the rising sun" (2016) by Bill O'Reilly
- "Lenin's tomb: The last days of the Soviet empire" (1993) by David Remnick
- "Putin country: A journey into the real Russia" (2016) by Anne Garrels
- "Nothing to envy: Ordinary lives in North Korea" (2009) by Barbara Demick
- "World order" (2014) by Henry Kissinger
- "All the president's men" (1974) by Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
- "Saigon has fallen" (2015) by Peter Arnett
- "102 minutes" (2006) by Jim Dwyer, Kevin Flynn
- "Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China" (2013) by Ezra F. Vogel
- "A bright shining lie" (1988) by Neil Sheehan
- "The looming tower: Al Qaeda's road to 9/11" (2014) by Lawrence Wright
- "The rape of Nanking" (1997) by Iris Chang
- "The best and the brightest" (1969) by David Halberstam
- "Hirohito and the making of modern Japan" (2000) by Herbert P. Bix
- "Mao's great famine" (2010) by Frank Dikötter
- "Apollo 8" (2017) by Jeffrey Kluger
- "Animal farm / 1984" (1948) by George Orwell
- "All art is propaganda: Critical essays" (1941) by George Orwell
- "How to not play Go" (2009) by Yuan Zhou
- "Opening theory made easy" (1992) by Otake Hideo
- "Reducing territorial frameworks" (1986) by Shuko Fujisawa
- "Attack and defense" (1980) by Akira Ishida, James Davies
- "A brief history of tea" (2009) by Roy Moxham
- "10,000 miles for love" (2017) by Milena Nguyen
- "Town of evening calm, country of cherry blossoms" (2004) by Fumiyo Kouno
- "Van Gogh: The life" (2011) by Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith
- "Diplomacy" (2012) by Henry Kissinger