I added this to my list of books to read a while back, believing that it was a decent read about the modern economy. Kyla Scanlon made a name for herself by making financial education content on social media. She coined the term vibecession to capture the state of the economy that looks good in terms of conventional economic statistics but feels bad to ordinary people. I’d expected to know a lot about the basics of economics but this book still surprised me by how basic and watered-down it is. Worse, Scanlan places herself firmly as part of the Gen Z and so writes primarily for them. As such it espouses Gen Z values and ideals that I feel aren’t necessarily a part of economics proper.

I’ve been following the Forge of Destiny / Threads of Destiny forum game for many years now though these days I’m just a reader and rarely participate in voting. I still consider it the best xianxia story I know of. This book is set in that same fantasy world but features stories about other characters other than Ling Qi, the protagonist of the main series. Many of these are Ling Qi’s friends and associates but there are also plenty of those from other times and places. I’ve already read most of these stories before as almost all of them are available online for free but I bought this to support the author and it’s nice to have them in a single volume. I will note that many of the stories don’t really stand on their own but feel more like worldbuilding snippets. Those who aren’t already following the main story might not get much out of this book.

Something far different than the norm for me this month and it’s novella-length, yet published as a book. This particular work is I think significant not only for its text but also for who its author was, when it was published and its significance as a parable for the rise of the Nazis. Ernst Jünger was a highly decorated soldier, a militarist and a political figure of the conservative right. Yet he was also opposed to the Nazis and was indirectly implicated in the famous Operation Valkyrie plot against Adolf Hitler’s life. This of course made him a more polarizing and fascinating person. The book itself is set in an idyllic fictional land that is described in such a dreamlike way that it may well be considered fantasy. The story itself is short and simple but is rife with symbolism that can be interpreted in any number of ways.

I was leery about the premise behind this novel when I first heard about but hey if people like a genderbent version of the Chinese classic Water Margin, why not? Then it was a finalist for the Nebula Award and was recommended by a bunch of critics, so I thought I should give it a shot. Specifically I was curious about web fiction not being widely recognized and wondered how a properly published book lauded by mainstream critics would match up. My verdict is not well at all. It’s an entertaining action-adventure that can be sometimes quite amusing but I wouldn’t consider it a deep book or even good writing.

Again, venturing out of my usual habit of reading only fiction, I decided to read this so-called fictionalized biography which has been making the rounds. It supposedly recounts the life of the legendary polymath John von Neumann but is really more general than that. It’s full of anecdotes about the circle of genius scientists around von Neumann and most significantly traces how his ideas led to what is today called AI. It’s not really a popular science book as it’s very thin in terms of scientific facts and most of that is common knowledge. What it does offer is the inside perspective of many of these famous personalities, at least as imagined by author Benjamin Labatut. It’s debatable how authentic these stories are true in spirit according to what we know about them and that has to be good enough.