2019 Reading List

By anders pearson 30 Dec 2019

For the last few years, at the end of the year, I’ve been posting my roundup of new music for the year. I’m a little bored with that for now and thought that this time, I’d list the books I read this year and maybe some brief thoughts on them.

According to my Amazon order history, the first book I bought in 2019 was Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition. I’d generally avoid anything with the word “hacking” in the title, but somehow this was recommended to me and I’m glad it was. It does a surprisingly good job of explaining basic exploitation techniques like buffer overflows, format string vulnerabilities, and shell code. The kind of stuff I used to read about in text files on usenet but never really got too far into. It reminded me that I really haven’t thought much about assembly and machine code since university. Back in those days, my exposure was mostly writing MIPS and Z-80 assembly and I never really bothered with x86. That led me to pick up Assembly Language Step-by-Step which isn’t terribly modern, but does a good job covering x86 assembly. Wanting to shore up the connections from assembly all the way to higher level languages, I also read Low-Level Programming: C, Assembly, and Program Execution on Intel® 64 Architecture, which was excellent. Its coverage of assembly isn’t as thorough, but it gets much more into those weird bits of compiler and linker magic that I’ve long avoided having to deal with. Later in the year, I ended up getting The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation and I absolutely love it. I’m an old space nerd (aren’t we all) and this is a fascinating look at the computer guidance system on the Apollo, including the hardware, the software, and some math and physics tricks they used to pull everything together.

I stumbled on Introduction to the Theory of Complex Systems at a bookstore and couldn’t resist it. It goes into network theory, evolutionary algorithms, statistical mechanics, and ties together ideas from mathematics, physics, biology, and social sciences. If you know me, you know that I’d be all over that. Afterwards, I wanted more and I’m pretty sure that The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe came up as a recommendation somehow. If you didn’t know, I was a physics major for most of my undergrad before switching to electrical and then computer engineering. This is the book that I wish I’d had when I was struggling through my physics classes. It doesn’t go deep into any of it, but Penrose explains so many of the concepts with a clarity that was definitely missing from my classes and textbooks. I’m not sure it would be that understandable without at least some basic college physics and math background, but if you ever took a general relativity or quantum mechanics class and felt like you didn’t really get it, this is definitely worth checking out.

That kind of got me thinking about those concepts in those physics classes that I’d learned to use but never really felt like I understood. As a physics major, you don’t necessarily have to take a lot of math classes, and there are a lot of things that get introduced in your physics classes as tools but aren’t really explained that well. Back when I was in school, we didn’t have Wikipedia or Youtube or Amazon (and I certainly didn’t have disposable income to spend on expensive math books that weren’t required for my classes) so unless you took a class on a topic or knew someone with that expertise, it was hard to fill in those gaps. By the end of my physics classes, I remember feeling like I was solving problems by pattern matching and mechanically applying memorized solutions and could get the right results but I no longer really knew what was going on. A few of the important ones that I definitely missed out on were tensors and topology. We used tensors plenty in physics classes, but I remember mostly just thinking of them as multi-dimensional matrices and a set of mechanical rules that you used to manipulate subscripts and superscripts in a way that let you do higher dimensional calcuations without having to write out a million terms. Every once in a while a professor would do something weird with them and we’d just have to take it on faith that it was valid, but it always left me feeling like there was a lot more that I didn’t understand.

This realization that I could now fill in those gaps led me down another rabbit hole of math books that occupied quite a bit of my year. I started with some youtube videos and various online resources that helped a lot. Then I picked up Tensor Calculus because some of those Dover books are inexpensive hidden gems. This one wasn’t. It might be fine if you are more of a mathematician, but I’m still fundamentally coming at things from a physics/engineering perspective and not that interested in proofs and derivations. The one that was much better for me was An Introduction to Tensors and Group Theory for Physicists. The preface basically described my exact situation of “lingering unease” around the concept and does a great job of filling in the blanks. It also made connections to group theory that I hadn’t really thought about. Group Theory comes up more often in computer science and is something I feel more comfortable with but it did remind me that I never actually took an Abstract Algebra class. I was also vaguely aware that despite seeming like it should be unrelated, Topology is pretty heavily based on Abstract Algebra and that was another topic that I wanted to fill in. So I got A Book of Abstract Algebra. That one I think does fall into the “hidden gems” category of Dover books. Highly recommended. I followed it up with Introduction to Topology which was… ok. It was clear enough and I could follow it, but it was pretty dry and I don’t feel like I gained any real insights from it. I didn’t come away from it thinking that Topology was amazing and having a different perspective on things. I just kind of feel like now I know a bunch of definitions and theorems. I also got Counterexamples in Topology which was highly recommended and I can see being a valuable reference, but it’s really not one that you just sit down and read cover to cover. Somewhere in the middle of my Dover math books spree, I also read Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension which was pretty shallow but a very quick and fun read.

The last math book I picked up that’s worth mentioning is Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering: A Comprehensive Guide. This is another book that I wish had existed when I was an undergrad. It’s big and extremely thorough. It basically covers all of the math you would need for an entire physics or engineering undergrad education. I really can’t think of a single mathematical concept, tool, or technique that I encountered in my undergrad physics and engineering that isn’t covered in it. For any given topic, there’s probably a better introduction or a more thorough treatment in some other book, but I’ve never seen any other book with the same breadth. It’s become my goto math reference and lives on a shelf by my desk now.

As a “palate cleanser” during my math refresher, I read The Poetics of Space which has been on my recommendations list for years and come up in numerous conversations. I don’t feel like I got as much out of it as I could have because I’m just not that familiar with the french poetry that he bases his discussions off of. I’m sure it’s one of those books that really needs to be read in its original French, but even in translation, it’s beautifully written and evocative.

I’ve been vegan for a while but only recently thought to actually read anything on the topic. Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism is probably the best introduction to the ethical and moral philosophy behind veganism and animal rights. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory makes a strong case for veganism as an important part of intersectional feminism. It was written in the 90’s though and both veganism (eg, at the time “vegan” wasn’t a commonly used term, so it only talks about “vegetarianism”) and feminism have changed quite a bit since then, so it needs to be read with that in mind. One chapter jumps right into fairly graphic descriptions of sexual violence without any warning, so that’s something to be aware of. On a completely different axis, How Not To Die: Discover the foods scientifically proven to prevent and reverse disease, while not explicitly “vegan”, is a great scientific look at nutrition from the doctor behind nutritionfacts.org and supports a vegan diet as at least a good starting point for avoiding many of the diseases and causes of mortality that plague the modern world.

I’ve been living in London for a few years now and in 2020, Phoenix and I become elligible for Indefinite Leave to Remain. Our main obstacle is passing a test that involves knowledge of British history, culture, and government. There’s an official guide, Life in the United Kingdom that covers everything that could be on the test along with practice tests and I’m pretty sure I could pass the test by cramming those for a bit. But I’ve got plenty of time and if I’m going to be living here long term, I figure I might as well know a bit more. Also, if you hadn’t noticed, the last few years have been pretty eventful in British politics and have exposed much of the world to the idiosyncratic and confusing way that very important decisions are made over here. In an effort to understand how these things work and the historical context behind them, I have been going through some “very short introduction” books to build up some background knowledge. So far I’ve gone through The British Empire, Nineteenth Century Britain, Twentieth Century Britain, The British Constitution, and British Politics. I’ll probably read a bunch more before I’m done.

Those books all fit into various themes or categories. In between them were a bunch that were pretty random:

Finally, the one piece of fiction I managed to read this year (to be fair, I read a lot of fiction in 2018, so I was taking a bit of a break on purpose) was Into the Dark (Dark Devices Book 1), which happens to have been written by my coworker. He wrote it for NaNoWriMo and self-published, which I strongly support. It’s not very long and leaves the story set up for future continuation, but it’s a nice fantasy read and reminds me of a slightly sci-fi’d up take on old D&D Underdark books.

Tags: books 2019