(partial) reading from 2016, 2017

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+
+The Good Terrorist, by Doris Lessing (1985)
+
+Reinventing Discovery, by Michael Nielsen (2011)
+
+Collapse, Jared Diamond (2005)
+
+Whole Earth Discipline, Steward Brand (2010)
+
+The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2, by Jane Pynter (2006)
+
+    One of my favorite reads of the year!
+    History of the project is fascinating. Sounds like the habitat itself was
+    amazingly ambitious and well constructed, but the social organization fell
+    apart after that and there wasn't discipline in running the experiments.
+    Disapointed to learn how exogenous the habitat was regarding air
+    conditioning and electricity, really only focused on mass transfer. I don't
+    really consider the first run a "failure" due to air exchange; seems like a
+    lot was learned, especially regarding social cohesion, which I would
+    consider part of the experiment.
+    The first large chunk of the book is very autobiographical, and it's an
+    interesting life story. Sort of orthogonal to the experiment itself, though
+    it does give context for how the whole thing got off the ground as a hippie
+    collective, which I found pretty inspiring.
+    Crazy historical detail: Steve Bannon (Breitbart editor and Trump
+    presidential advisor) was involved in a repossesion of the Biosphere
+    facility!
+
+Death's End (Three Body Problem), Liu Cixin (刘慈欣).
+
+Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
+
+Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie (Rilke translation, 2002)
+
+On the Shortness of Life, by Seneca
+
+Not cover to cover:
+* Manufacturing Process for Design Professionals
+* Payment Systems in the US
+* Google SRE Book
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+
+Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
+
+Assembling California, by John McPhee (1993)
+
+    Part of a series on geology of the USA, covering the California section, as
+    well as some history of plate tectonics in the 20th century.
+    Good intro to the history and current geography of California on human
+    timescales as well: the 1989 earthquake, gold mining in the Sierras, Napa
+    valley wine country, the story of the Davis campus, etc.
+    The last chapter, about earthquakes in the SF bay area, was as powerful as
+    the July 2015 New Yorker article ("The Really Big One") about tsunamis in
+    the Pacific Northwest.
+
+Not cover to cover:
+* Engineering a Safer World