#1 - Aggressor series by FX Holden - Set in the near future with AI, drones, and much more. It is a Tom Clancy-like book about WW3 breaking out over Tawain. Sometimes, I would come out of reading it and be unsure if I was reading the news or a book.
#2 - The Comfort Crisis By Michael Easter – What a fantastic book, I wish they studied this in high school for every single student. I listened to it on audiobook, and it was really well done there, too. The format is fantastic with this big arching story and in-between chapters that nail down each point. The core message is that we are much better humans if we challenge ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically.
#3 - Wounded Tigris by Leon McCarron - Leon and his small team travel down the entire Tigris River. They start in Turkey, go through all of Iraq, and end in the marshes. I picked it up, thinking it would be an interesting adventure with a heavy dose of history. Instead, I got an utterly fascinating account of the river, its ecosystem, the heavy impact of pollution and water management, and the cultural impact of all these changes on the people who live alongside it. I still think about this book.
And one more on the fiction side here: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/f/bwb
If you want to share your 3 favorite reads of the year, I have a voting setup for the Hacker News Community here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42349605
You can share your 3 favorites and see what everyone else picked here: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2024/hacker-news-community?referre...
I wanted to create a setup like NPR's Books We Love but for HN and other communities.
