The best books I read in 2023

Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett

The highlight of 2023 for me was discovering the Discworld series. They're the most fun books I've ever read and you come away feeling wiser. When doing anything now, I'm often prone to randomly chuckling over bits like the intro to Color of Magic, Death on holiday trying to understand humans, or the many inside jokes that get better with each book like million-to-one shots or Ankh-Morpork in general. I read the first 13 Discworld books in 2023 and at times, I didn't want to read anything else.

You series by Caroline Kepnes

I read the first You book at the end of last year and it made the list as one of my favorite books of 2022. This year I enjoyed the other 3 You books and Providence, which means I've read every published work by Caroline Kepnes. More than anything else, her work has been the best at helping me deal with insecurities ("It's just a front for the Dan Browns in the bottom of his basket. Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are. I bag the Dan Brown first like it's kiddie porn..."), remain grateful ("it's more fun to chase the yarn than it is to have the yarn"), go for my passions ("In this life, you don't get to be anything slash anything"), take feedback the right way ("We're supposed to eat our shit sandwiches and tip the fucking server"), understand how trauma sets us up for the rest of our lives, and so much more.

The Everything Store by Brad Stone

You should see my Apple note for this one. In a year where I was finding my best use for non-fiction was getting sleep on a plane, I obsessed over this one. Most of the time, when I'm learning about great companies or founders, it can feel like a lot of right place, right time, one or two strokes of luck or genius over a decade or two, some thing that just happened to blow up, etc. With Jeff Bezos, everything seemed much more intentional and calculated. This is the best business book I've ever read and I think this is a must-read for everyone building products or companies.

Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs by John Pilger

Must read for everyone--although your heart may only be able to take so much. From US-endorsed genocides in Southeast Asia, to discounting everything scientists were showing about radioactivity's affect on people in Hiroshima, to covering up for companies whose medicine led to babies born without limbs, this book will make you lose faith in at least the major news publications and governmentments but unfortunately probably institutions in general. Try not to lose faith entirely but always be wary.

Refactoring UI

If you're an engineer building websites or mobile apps and you've ever felt "if I just had a designer...", then this is the book for you. The reason you're able to read this on my personal website right now is because this book gave me the confidence to ship something I designed.

Macbeth by Shakespeare

It's a shame we "read" things in middle and high school and so we feel like there's no need to read it 10+ years later when we're different people and will take different things away. I had a lot of fun deep-diving on the Bard and specifically Macbeth. Some historical context I found interesting:

• Elizabeth I and James I were the monarchs during Shakespeare's time. They both sponsored work from him. During James' time, the name of Shakespeare's company was The King's Men.
• James wrote a book on Demonologie in 1597 on witches, their powers, and their pact with the devil. He uses it to drum up public support to kill “witches” at 5x the rate in Scotland than was happening in England.
• A formative witch-hatin' event for him was a voyage to Denmark in 1590 in which the winds threatened to crash their ship. One such power he attributes to witches is control of the wind to kill people on the side of God. James also thought his mother, Bloody Mary, was killed by witches.
• In 1598 "A Treatise of Equivocation" is published by a Henry Garnet who in 1605 is part of Gunpowder day. He is executed in May 1606. Equivocation is a way of speaking ambiguously that evades the truth. This is why the witches in Macbeth speak as such.
• The divine right of kings was being questioned in the lead up to Gunpowder day. Some people were worried about the chaos that would happen if we flip the system.
• When king James comes to rule England he is frustrated to find a populace that doesn't care about burning witches as much as Scotland. He uses the printing industry to encourage it. Several playwrights pine for his approval by creating works that feed into it. Macbeth was the most famous of these.
• Inaugural performance of it is attended by Queen Anne's brother from Denmark—whom they were coming back from in the voyage of 1590 that spurred James to witch hunts. All leaders of English judiciary attended this showing as well. This was absolutely meant to stoke fervor for witches.
• Macbeth is deliberately short in length because King James was too impatient for longer plays.
• Banquo is not only a character in the story but is a reference to mythical Banquo that was made up to legitimize a line of Kings in Scotland. King James' claim to Scotland was in claiming his relation to this Banquo. In prior stories he takes by slaughter, but Shakespeare rewrites him in history as an honorable man.
• The play was particularly potent with the masses because the gunpowder plot having just happened. Over 3 years England goes from golden age to darkest period in history.
• This is the same King James that wrote the King James version of the bible.

We admire a lot of art and artists because of the positive impact they made on the world by speaking truth to power. Shakespeare, at least with Macbeth, was no such artist. It's plausible his work here actually contributed to the killings of innocent people. Additionally, Macbeth absolutely comes down on the side of the divine right of kings, supressing the more people-friendly forms of government we encourage today. Despite this, there are many positives we can take from Macbeth. Such as:

• A big topic at the time was predestination vs free will. Are we just fated to go to heaven or hell and as such don't really have free will? How can you be blamed for your choices if you don't have free will? To me, Macbeth seems to come down on the side of all of us having an upper and lower self we can choose and Macbeth's ruin came from choosing the lower. There are even hints he could have had it all had he chosen his upper self.
• Macbeth also seems to make a point that the killing and warmongering that male leaders do more than female leaders is not manly, but cruel and unnatural, and we could all benefit from male leaders being less "manly".
• Another question that was popular at this time: if you have already condemned yourself to hell with murders, why should you even care anymore? Or is forgiveness available to all humans?
• Does Shakespeare take some stabs at King James that he wasn't quick enough to catch?
  • Act 4, Scene 2: "I dare not speak much further; but cruel are the times when we are traitors and do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor from what we fear, yet know not what we fear, but float upon a wild and violent sea each way and none."
  • Act 4, Scene 2: “But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly.”

In the Bard's defense, speaking truth to power may have gotten him killed and/or prevented some of the positive lessons his other plays and even Macbeth from being put out there. Was he trying to make change from the inside? While Macbeth was certainly successful as witch-killing propoganda, would the void have been filled by something worse? Would we be worse off if Shakespeare hadn't co-wrote this propoganda piece with King James? Was Shakespeare putting into practice one of the best quotes from this very play: "God go with you and with those that would make good of bad and friends of foes!"