Until today I hadn’t included audiobooks I listened to in my reading list. While I gather it is a hotly contensted question whether listening to audiobooks counts as reading, I never had strong opinions about it. I didn’t include them mostly because I didn’t listen to them that often, but I guess I also considered listening a different activity. That was probably because most of my non-music listening was podcasts rather than books.

After another year of reading it’s been fun to review my list from 2023 since I had forgotten a few of the books I read. I wanted to highlight my favorite and least favorite books of the year. Non-Fiction My favorite non-fiction of the year was Algorithms of Oppression and it wasn’t even close. There are so many ways to criticize Google and other big tech companies, but the focus on search engines as a vehicle to enforce racism and sexism was fascinating.

For a long time I mostly only read books at the beach or on a plane, but in 2022 I started intentionally reading more. The decision was obvious: I liked books, missed reading consistently, and it gave me something enjoyable to do before bed instead of endlessly scrolling on social media. Partway through the year, I started a public reading list to track all the books I’ve read. Over a year later, I wanted to reflect on how it’s been so far and talk about why I do this.

Earlier this week, Ethan Marcotte’s new book You Deserve a Tech Union came out and I read it immediately. I didn’t know what to expect as someone who, until recently, hasn’t seen the point of unions for generally well-treated tech workers. There is a widely held notion that tech workers are somehow different than workers in other industries. There’s the idea that the tech industry is made up of individual stars and success comes from an individual’s merit.

Nicole Perlroth’s This is How They Tell Me the World Ends is a deep dive into the history of the global cyberweapons market. It covers the origins of bug bounty programs, some history of offensive operations at the NSA, a narrative of well-known cyberattacks, and discussion of the risk the United States faces from digital attack. It is equal parts exciting and terrifying and overall a worthy read for anyone interested in cybersecurity.