Ghettos of Abu Nawas

Reading List

Books I've read:

1. August 2024

  • Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala LOVED (2022)
  • Moonbound, by Robin Sloan (2024)

2. June 2024

  • Rio Noir, edited by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza (2014)
  • The Book of All Skies, by Greg Egan (2021)
  • Distress, by Greg Egan (2013)

3. May 2024

  • The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler (2022)
  • Wounded Tigris: A River Journey Through the Cradle of Civilization, by Leon McCarron (2023)

4. April 2024

  • Morphotropic, by Greg Egan (2024)
  • /Beirut Noir, edited by Rawi Hage (2015)

5. March 2024

  • The Epiphany of Gliese 581, by Fernando Borretti (2022) LOVED

6. Feburary 2024

  • Can the Monster Speak? A Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts, by Paul B. Preciado (2020)
  • Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems, by Marianne Bellotti (2021)

7. January 2024

  • Languages: A Very Short Introduction, by Stephen R. Anderson (2012)
  • The Adventure, by Georgio Agamben (2018)
  • Cruel Optimism, by Lauren Berlant (2011) LOVED
  • Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, by Tiqqun (1999) LOVED
  • Busy Doing Nothing, by Rekka Bellum and Devine Lu Linvega (2021)
  • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman (2021)

8. December 2023

  • The Purple Land, by William Henry Hudson (1885)
  • Ra, by qntm (2014) LOVED
  • Havana Noir, edited by Leonardo Padura Fuentes (2007)
  • Wiktopher, by Rekka Bellum (2023)
  • Philosophy for Passengers, by Michael Marder (2022)

9. November 2023

  • Singapore Noir, edited by Lu-Lien Cheryl Tan (2014)
  • Tehran Noir, edited by Salar Abdoh (2014)
  • Buenos Aires Noir, edited by Ernesto Mallo (2014)

10. October 2023

  • Norweigan Wood, by Haruki Murakami (1987)

11. September 2023

  • Logic Beach: Part I, by Exurb1a (2017)
  • Stuff Goes Bad: Erlang in Anger, by Fred Hebert (2014)
  • There Is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm (2020)
  • The Bridge to Lucy Dunne, by Exurb1a (2016)
  • Permutation City, by Greg Egan (1994)
  • Ed, by qntm (2013)
  • Sleep and the Soul, by Greg Egan (2023)
  • The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, by David Graeber (2013)

12. August 2023

  • Unwanted Witnesses: Journalists and Conflict in Latin America, by Gabriela Polit Duenas (2019)
  • Diaspora, by Greg Egan (1997)

13. July 2023

  • A Thousand Trails Home, by Seth Kantner (2021)

14. June 2023

  • The Prince of Milk, by Exurb1a (2017)

15. April 2023

  • An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular, by Martin Demant Frederiksen (2018)

16. March 2023

  • Discourse on Colonialism, by Aimé Césaire (1955)
  • Hollow Kingdom, by Jane Kira Buxton (2019)

17. Feburary 2023

  • Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories, by qntm (2022)
  • Venomous Lumpsucker, by Ned Beauman (2022)
  • On Suicide Bombing, by Talal Asad (2007)

18. January 2023

  • Dark Constellations, Pola Oloxiarac (2019)
  • Poems for the Lost Because I'm Lost Too, by Exurb1a (2022)

19. November 2022

  • Invitation to a Beheading, by Vladimir Nabokov (2011)
  • Chasing Homer, by László Krasznahorkai (2021)
  • Total Shambles, by F. George (2015)

20. October 2022

  • Intoxicology: A Cultural History of Drink and Drugs, by Walton Stuart (2016)
  • Automatic Religion: Nearhuman Agents of Brazil and France, by Paul Christopher Johnson (2020)

21. September 2022

  • The Fifth Science, by Exurb1a (2018)
  • Pilgrims Until We Die: Unending Pilgrimage in Shikoku, by Ian Reader (2021)
  • Raccoon, by Daniel Heath Justice (2021)
  • Awake, by Harald Voetmann (2021)

22. August 2022

  • Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional, by Isaac Fitzgerald (2022)
  • My War Gone By, I Miss It So, by Anthony Loyd (1999)
  • The Kind Worth Killing, by Peter Swanson (2015)
  • Washington Bullets, by Vijay Prashad (2020)
  • Another Bloody Love Letter, by Anthony Loyd (2007)

23. July 2022

  • Meaty, by Samantha Irby (2013)
  • Experimenting with Ethnography: A Companion to Analysis, by Andrea Ballestero (2021)

24. June 2022

  • The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami (1993)
  • Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of Ashura in Twelver Shi'ism, by Mahmoud M. Ayoub (1978)
  • How Did You Get This Number: Essays, by Sloan Crosley (2010)
  • Unbury Our Dead With Song, by Mukoma wa Ngugi (2021)
  • Modularity - The Engines of Cognition, by the LessWrong community (2021)

25. May 2022

  • What Is Religious Authority?: Cultivating Islamic Communities in Indonesia, by Ismail Fajrie Alatas (2021)
  • Trust - The Engines of Cognition, by the LessWrong community (2021)
  • The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath, by Ben S. Bernanke (2015)
  • Fine Structure, by qntm (2010)
  • Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent, by Harriet A. Washington (2021)
  • After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (2007)

26. Feburary 2022

  • The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, by Enseng Ho (2006)
  • Baghdad Noir, by Samuel Shimon (2018)

27. January 2022

  • The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, by Gregory Zuckerman (2019)

28. December 2021

  • An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management, by Will Larson (2019)
  • Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, by Will Larson (2021)
  • Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason, by Talal Asad (2018)
  • The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan (2007)
  • Sex and Secularism, by Joan Wallach Scott (2017)

29. November 2021

  • Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935, by Leor Halevi (2019)

30. October 2021

  • The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture, by Jonathan Sheehan (2005)
  • Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka, by Anne M. Blackburn (2010)

31. September 2021

  • Geometry for Ocelots, by Exurb1a (2021)

32. August 2021

  • The Kowloon English Club, by Stephen Griffiths (2019)
  • I, Who Did Not Die, by Zahed Haftlang and Najah Aboud (2017)
  • The Spymaster of Baghdad, by Margaret Coker (2021)

33. July 2021

  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas S. Kuhn (1962)
  • This City is a Minefield, by Aaron Chan (2019)
  • Good Times in Dystopia, by George F. (2020)
  • First Person Singular: Stories, by Haruki Murakami (2021)

34. May 2021

  • Understanding 'sectarianism': Sunni-Shi'a Relations in the Modern Arab World, by Fanar Haddad (2020)

35. March 2021

  • Beyond Debt: Islamic Experiments in Global Finance, by Daromir Rudnyckyj (2018)

36. January 2021

  • Out of Mesopotamia, by Salar Abdoh (2020)
  • The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God & Other Stories, by Etgar Keret (2001)
  • Scientific Freedom: The Exilir of Civilization, by Donald W. Braben (2008)
  • Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, by James P. Carse (1987)

37. December 2020

  • History Has Begun, by Bruno Macaes (2020)
  • War from the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics, by Emile Simpson (2012)
  • Arabian Satire: Poetry from the 18th Century Najd, by Ḥmēdān al-Shwēʿir , Jane Tylus (Foreword), Marcel Kurpershoek (Translator) (2020)
  • Savage Theories, by Pola Oloixarac (2008)

38. October 2020

  • Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientialism, by Zachary Lockman (2004)
  • The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit, by Seth Godin (2007)

39. August 2020

  • Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell (1999)

40. July 2020

  • Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood – A History in Thirteen Centuries, by Justin Marozzi (2014)
  • Dance Dance Dance, by Haruki Murakami (1988)
  • A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3), by Haruki Murakami (1982)

41. June 2020

  • Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective, by J. Christopher Soper and Joel S. Fetzer (2018)
  • The Last Wolf / Herman, by László Krasznahorkai (2016)
  • New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, by James Bridle (2018)
  • Peace Operations Seen From Below: UN Missions and Local People, by Beatrice Pouligny (2006)
  • A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is, by John McHugo (2017)
  • State of Repression: Iraq Under Saddam Hussein, by Lisa Blaydes (2018)
  • Goat Days, by Benyamin (2008)

42. May 2020

  • Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career, by Scott Young (2019)
  • Streetwise: How Taxi Drivers Establish Customer's Trustworthiness, by Diego Gambetta and Heather Hamill (2005)
  • Look Alive Out There, by Sloane Crosley (2018)
  • Chaos, a Fable, by Rodrigo Rey Rosa (2019)
  • Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance, by Joel Rayburn (2014)

43. April 2020

  • A PhD Is Not Enough: A Guide To Survival In Science, by Peter J. Feibelman (1993)
  • How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers, by Sönke Ahrens (2017)
  • Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939: Migration in a Post-Imperial World, by Isa Blumi (2013)
  • Afghanistan Rising: Islamic Law and Statecraft Between the Ottoman and British Empires, by Faiz Ahmed (2017)
  • Spiritual Subjects: Central Asian Pilgrims and the Ottoman Hajj at the End of Empire, by Lâle Can (2020)
  • Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete, by Steve House & Scott Johnston (2014)
  • Training for the Uphill Athlete: A Manual for Mountain Runners and Ski Mountaineers, by Steve House (2019)
  • The Universal Enemy: Jihad as Solidarity at the End of Empire, by Darryl Li (2019)
  • Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport (2016)
  • Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World, edited by Zahra Hankir (2019)

44. March 2020

  • Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, by Benedict Anderson (1983)
  • Humanism in Ruins: Entangled Legacies of the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange, by Asli Igsiz (2019)
  • How to Write a Thesis, by Umberto Eco (1977)
  • The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael Provence (2017)

45. February 2020

  • Familiar Futures: Time, Selfhood, and Sovereignty in Iraq, by Sara Pursely (2019)
  • A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity, by Michael Meeker (2002)

46. January 2020

  • The Book of Disappearance, by Ibtisam Azem (2019)
  • Scenes from Village Life, by Amos Oz (2011)

47. November 2019

  • The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East, by Robert Fisk (2005)

48. September 2019

  • Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence (1922)

49. August 2019

  • The Wandering Falcon, by Jamil Ahmad (2011)

50. July 2019

  • First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, by Slavoj Žižek (2009)

51. June 2019

  • House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox, by William H. Foege (2011)
  • Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday (2018)

52. May 2019

  • Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy Against Separatists, by Ahsan Butt (2017)
  • The Bookseller of Kabul, by Åsne Siererstad (2004)
  • The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya, by Frederic Wehrey (2018)

53. April 2019

  • The Little Book of Fixers, by Jan Chipchase (2019)
  • Sacred Cesium Group and Isa's Deluge: Two Novellas of Japan's 3/11 Disaster, by Yusuke Kimura (2019)
  • The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy, by Daniel Kalder (2018)
  • Extremism, by J.M. Berger (2018)
  • The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence, by Gary A. Haugen (2014)

54. March 2019

  • Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, by Robin Yassin-Kassab (2016)
  • War Reporting for Cowards, by Chris Ayres (2006)
  • We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages and Ransom, by Joel Simon (2019)
  • Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages, by Gaston Dorren (2018)

55. February 2019

  • Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations, edited by Alane Mason (2006)
  • To the Mountains: My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan, by Abdullah Anas (2019)

56. January 2019

  • Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography, by Robert Irwin (2018)
  • Why Don't We Learn from History?, by B.H. Liddel Hart (1944)

57. December 2018

  • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami (1994)
  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami (2013)
  • The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, by Tim Wu (2018)
  • A Month by the Sea: Encounters in Gaza, by Dervla Murphy (2013)
  • Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami (2003)

58. November 2018

  • Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God, by Matthew Levitt (2013)
  • Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners, by Michael Erard (2012)
  • The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
  • Killing Commendatore, by Haruki Murakami (2017)

59. September 2018

  • The Baghdad Eucharist: A Novel, by Sinan Antoon (2012)
  • The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel, by Jeffery Lewis (2018)
  • Judas, by Amos Oz (2015)
  • Saudi America: The Truth about Fracking and How It's Changing the World, by Bethany McLean (2018)
  • Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East, by David Kirkpatrick (2018)

60. August 2018

  • Quicksilver War: Syria, Iraq and the Spiral of Conflict, by William Harris (2017)
  • An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helman Conflict, by Mike Martin (2017)

61. July 2018

  • Spies in the Family: An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War, by Eva Dillion (2017)
  • Ballots, Bullets, and Bargains: American Foreign Policy and Presidential Elections, by Michael H Armacost (2015)
  • Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, by John Drury Clark (1972)
  • The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy, by Yassin Al-Haj Saleh (2017)
  • Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century, by Seva Gunitsky (2017)
  • The Taliban Reader: War, Islam, Politics, edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn (2018)
  • Couchsurfing in Iran: Revealing a Hidden World, by Stephen Orth (2016)
  • Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings, edited by Mohamed Zayani and Suzi Mirgani (2016)
  • The Caliphate at War: The Ideological, Organisational and Military Innovations of Islamic State, by Ahmed S. Hashim (2017)

62. June 2018

  • Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony, by Kori Schake (2017)
  • Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, by Naunihal Singh (2014)
  • Afghanistan from the Cold War through the War on Terror, by Barnett Rubin (2013)
  • A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn (2005)

63. May 2018

  • Trees, maps, and theorems, by Jean-luc Doumont (2009)
  • Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War, by Marwan Hisham (2018)
  • History of the Silk Road, by Jonathan Clements (2017)
  • Losing the Nobel Prize, by Brian Keating (2018)

64. April 2018

  • The Koran in English: A Biography, by Bruce B. Lawrence (2017)
  • The Red Star and the Crescent: China and the Middle East, by James Reardon-Anderson (2018)
  • High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia, by Will Doig (2018)
  • On Gravity: A Brief Tour of a Weighty Subject, by A. Zee (2018)
  • Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, by Peter Hopkirk (2006)
  • Tribes and Politics in Yemen: A History of the Houthi Conflict, by Marieke Brandt (2017)
  • Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State, by Justin M. Jacbos (2016)

65. March 2018

  • The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic, by Steven Johnson (2007)
  • Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, by Thomas Barfield (2010)
  • Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Daron Acemoğlu (2012)
  • Alone in the Ocean, by Slava Kurilov (2016)
  • Memories of a Theoretical Physicist, by Joseph Polchinski (2017)
  • Dear Committee Members, by Julie Schumacher, (2014)
  • A History of the Middle East, by Peter Mansfield (2013)

66. February 2018

  • Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, by Stephen E. Ambrose (2010)
  • A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962, by Alistar Horne (2006)

67. January 2018

  • Pipe Dreams: The Plunder of Iraq's Oil Wealth, by Erin Banco (2018)
  • The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, by Ali H Soufan (2011)
  • Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror, by Helen C. Epstein (2017)
  • Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the US Foreign Service, Harry W. Knopp (2017)
  • Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language, by Richard M. Roberts (2015)
  • The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff (2003)

68. 2017

When Breath Becomes Air Paul Kalanithi
Law's Abnegation Adrian Vermeule
High Performance Browser Networking Ilya Grigorik
Zero Day: The Threat in Cyberspace Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World Haruki Murakami
Paper Tigers: China's Nuclear Posture Jeffery Lewis
Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World Trevor Paglen
Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right Angela Nagel
The Field Study Handbook Jan Chipchase
The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century Adam Kirsch
The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Why Wall Street Matters William D. Cohan
Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders Joushua Foer
Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays Tom McCarthy
Outpatients Sasha Issenberg
A Question of Order: India, Turkey, and the Return of Strongmen Basharat Peer
Do I Make Myself Clear? Why Writing Well Matters Harold Evans
Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia Anne Garrels
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change Elizabeth Kolbert
Shadow Courts: The Tribunals that Rule Global Trade Haley Sweetland Edwards
Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism Nato Thompson
Blind Spot Teju Cole
Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia Alexander Cooley
Invisible Cities Italo Calvino
Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and The Chinese Dream Clay Shirky
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software Charles Petzold
Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War and the Aftermath Annel Garrels
Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest Zenyenp Tufekci
The Song of the Dodo David Quammen
Coup d'État Edward Luttwak
No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes Anad Gopal
Listening in: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age Susan Landau
Letters from Burma Aung San Suu Kyi
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read Pierre Bayard
Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran Laura Secor
Above the Timberline Gregory Manchess

69. 2016

The Nature of Code Daniel Shiffman
Introduction to Modern Cryptography Jonathan Katz & Yehuda Lindell
Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach F. Kurose James
Playing Dead: A Journel Through the World of Death Fraud Elizabeth Greenwood
Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore Robin Sloan
The Stormlight Archive Brandon Sanderson
Posted: 2018-01-01
Filed Under: N/A