May I recommend?

Here are some of the books I enjoyed in 2018. They all scored 5.

Fiction

I’m a geek, so my fiction reading is pretty much genre fiction - science fiction, horror, urban fantasy. I don’t read that much pure fantasy - elves and dwarfs don’t really do it for me.

The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross. This was probably my favourite book of the year, with things for the Laundry (Britain’s occult branch of Her Majesty’s government) going very pear shaped as the forces of privatisation and eldritch horrors combine. This is book something in the series, so I suggest that you start with The Atrocity Archives, which is where it all began. (But if you can’t bear reading that, you could easily jump into the series with book 5, The Rhesus Chart, which sort of kick-starts the series again. The only difficult with that is that one of the players in The Delirium Brief first appears in The Fuller Memorandum, so there’s that.)

If I have a criticism, it’s that Stross sometimes thinks that his writing is clearer than it is, which is why I find it essential reading to read his “crib sheets” about the books, which can be found on his blog (here is the crib sheet for The Delirium Brief).

I also read The Labyrinth Index in 2018, but I didn’t enjoy that as much. For me the Laundry works best when it’s being British, and The Labyrinth Index spends most of its time in America. (It still scored 4 though.)

The Consuming Fire and The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. I’ve been enjoying Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (another book that scored 5 with me - see last year). I can’t remember how The Consuming Fire came to my attention, but as soon as I read it I immediately had to read The Collapsing Empire.

These two are the first two books of a trilogy, which is full of Game of Thrones style machinations but set in space (and with fewer pages and smaller cast of characters). Lots of ruthless plotting and villainy to keep me entertained - the kind of family politics where family members are sacrificed for the greater good. I suspect the good guys will win in the end. Book 3 is due out in 2019 - I’m looking forward to that.

Non-Fiction

Inside the Nudge Unit by David Halpern. This is the story of the Behavioural Insights Team that David Cameron set up in 2010. I’d heard about governments using nudge theory, but this was the first time I’d read anything in detail about it. I read this on my Kindle, and one of the things I’ve got into the habit of doing (with non-fiction particularly) is to highlight passages I find interesting. In this one I learned that:

• Having a good relationship with your boss is associated with dramatic increases in life satisfaction - as good as a 30% pay rise. Keeping a diary also works. (Although if you ask people political questions first, they will then report lower wellbeing. Hmmm.)
• If you want to encourage a particular behaviour, make it easier. If you want to discourage it, make it harder. (I know this isn’t rocket science, and is something I often practice at work, but it’s amazing how many people don’t think like this.)
• Easy to read messages are not only likely to be understood, they are also likely to be believed.

Arguably, this is just marketing, of course.

Inside the Nudge Unit lead me to the book that started it all: Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge. I didn’t enjoy this as much - I found it fairly heavy going in places. It also went over a lot of ground that I’d read previously - and not only in Inside the Nudge Unit, but in other psychology books I’ve read. Perhaps had I read Nudge first I would have scored it higher.

I also read the do-it-yourself book from the Nudge Unit: Think Small by Owain Service & Rory Gallagher. I enjoyed this (it scored 4), but much of it I’d read before.

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland. We’ve spent the last few years at work dabbling with lean, which I have found fascinating (if somewhat frustrating, but that’s another story). There are clear parallels here, as Scrum has a lot of similar ideas to lean, but to me felt a bit more practical. (Although in both cases they will fall down if the organisations leaders haven’t bought into it.)

Superbetter by Jane McGonigal. Superbetter is about using the science of games (particularly computer games, but other games are mentioned) to make yourself happier and boost your resilience. It does this by using the language of games (quests, power-ups, allies, and so on) and turns it into things you can do in real life. There’s a bunch of science behind much of this (although as with a lot of this kind of psychology research, I expect that it’s not always possible to replicate the results).

As with a game, the quests start off easy and then get harder.

Some things I liked:

• Quest 5 is just to turn your palms up and leave them that way for at least 15 seconds. Apparently this triggers a powerful response in our brain and we’re less likely to reject or dismiss new ideas and information.
• Quest 10 is about boosting social ties and involves asking someone by email or messenger: “On a scale of 1-10, how’s your day going?” And then when they respond, asking “Is there anything I can do to raise it from X to X+1?” I’m a bit too introverted (or maybe just shy) to try this one out, so maybe that’s even more reason to try it.

I wish I had read Superbetter on my Kindle, as I have no doubt I would have liberally highlighted it which would have made it easier for me now. However, I listened to this via Audible and it’s hard to make notes while driving to work or walking the dog. I have since bought a paper copy.

Superbetter introduced me to the pattern-matching game Set, which Megan is much too good at and almost always beats me.

McGonigal’s TED talks are also worth watching. I particularly liked the one about thumb wrestling.

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay has been a bestseller, and covers Adam’s time as a Junior Doctor (which makes them sound more junior than they really are). Funny and heartbreaking, it’s difficult to listen to this and then feel anything other than anger with the way that doctors have been treated by the government.

The Secret Barrister by The Secret Barrister. I followed This is Going to Hurt with the anonymously written The Secret Barrister. This is in the same vein, and takes a similar and frightening look at the law. It’s hard not to feel sympathetic, and assuming that this is true, makes you realise quite how thoroughly broken some parts of our society are. Scary.