Sym·poly·mathesy

by Chris Krycho

Reading List

The books I am—or plan to be—reading!

I keep this page fairly current; it was last updated on August 21, 2025.

  • The section for each year includes all the books I read that year (including the current year), in the order I finished the books.
  • Books are marked “(new)” if this was the first time I read them, or “(reread)” otherwise.
  • I separate out fiction and non-fiction not because I value them differently, but because they just are very different.
  • Links on the books themselves are affiliate to Bookshop.org!

Quick links:

Planned

These are books I am actively planning to read — not just volumes I’m vaguely interested in, but texts I am committed to reading for some reason.

Non-fiction

Fiction

(no specific plans right now!)

Started

These are books I have actually begun reading. (You will see items move from Planned down here if you watch this page!)

Non-fiction

Fiction

Poetry

  • Ponds, J. C. Scharl (new)
  • Advent: An Anthology, Hannah Hodgson (new)

2025

Non-fiction

Fiction

2024

Non-fiction

Fiction

2023

Nonfiction

Fiction

2022

Nonfiction

Fiction

2021

Nonfiction

Fiction

2020

Non-fiction

Fiction

2019

Non-Fiction

Fiction

2018

Fiction

Tabled

These are books I have started at some point but have (at least for now!) put aside and do not currently plan to finish, but which I might come back to eventually.

  • Introduction to Applied Linear Algebra: Vectors, Matrices, and Least Squares, Stephen Boyd (new)

  • What Are Christians For?: Life Together at the End of the World, Jake Meador (new)

  • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk (new)

  • Essentials of Compilation: An Incremental Approach in Racket, Jeremy G. Siek (new)

  • Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, David H. Kelsey (new)

    Tabled, ultimately, because I found I had gotten everything helpful I could from Kelsey’s opening few chapters, and decided it was not worth wading through his absolutely awful prose for the sake of his equally atrocious hermeneutical moves later in the book.

  • Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (new)

    I suspect there are a few interesting things in this book, but Taleb is perhaps the most insufferable writer of nonfiction I have encountered in the last decade. The core idea of “things which get stronger via challenge” is a mildly interesting idea, but the egotistical delivery and “Isn’t it amazing how no one else ever saw this? Aren’t I so smart? And also isn’t it great how I am ripped? And let me call every other philosophy or approach ‘sissy’ or ‘wussy’…” got very old very quickly.

  • Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High(Third Edition), Al Switzler, Emily Gregory, Ron McMillan, Kerry Patterson, and Joseph Grenny (new)

    Despite a friend’s recommendation, I absolutely could not get into this — at least not in audiobook form. Maybe at some point I will skim it in ebook form? Maybe not.

  • The Face of Battle, John Keegan (new)

    I was listening on audiobook and that was not the format for this one. Might pick it back up at some point in print.

  • Open Music Theory, Mark Gotham, Kyle Gullings, Chelsey Hamm, Bryn Hughes, Brian Jarvis, Megan Lavengood, and John Peterson (new)

    This was useful as a refresher, but I don’t presently have time to work through the whole thing!

  • Functional Programming in Lean, David Thrane Christiansen (new)

    This is great, and I worked through about half of it, but then it was time to focus on finding a job, and that meant minimizing outside projects.

  • Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully (new)

    I liked the first chapter of it, and I might return to it, but probably in ebook or paper book form, rather than audiobook.

  • The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change, Camille Fournier

    This is good, but overlaps enough with a lot of the other material I’ve read (in Fournier’s defense: much of it downstream of this seminal book!) that I found myself uninterested in continuing after about half the book.

  • The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, Clare Morell

    I think there’s some good here, but it’s packaged up in far too extreme a set of terms — terms that I simply disagree with and think are out of step with reality. Morell cherry-picks the worst outcomes and ignores the median scenario, which is far different. After the first third of the book, I was out.

  • Hood, Stephen R. Lawhead (new)

    I last read Lawhead back in high school. I didn’t find his prose to have aged particularly well, alas, and ended up not finishing this before my library loan ran out and not interested in renewing it. Alas.

  • Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, Sarah Wynn-Williams (new)

    I tried this as an audiobook and couldn’t get through it. I suspect I could have made better progress in ebook format. I also found, though, that I wasn’t all that interested in Wynn-Williams’ personal narrative: I picked up the book to hear about Facebook/Meta, not her journey. She seems like a nice person, but not the kind of person about whom I would normally pick up a biography or memoir!

Notes

  1. This is where it is for a reason. Don’t @ me. ↩︎

  2. These do not have links because they are entirely unavailable on Bookshop.org, and may be out of print. You may still be able to find them on Alibris… or by asking a local used bookstore! ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎