As per last year, some things I read in 2018, with some brief opinions/recommendations.

All categorisations are approximate at best and will probably cause some kind of contention.

Fiction

• Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Divine Cities Trilogy - having read the first book in 2017, I definitely wanted to read the rest - really enjoyable world-building and characters and interactions
• Roald Dahl - The Complete Short Stories - thanks again to Chris for the recommendation
• Christopher Moore - Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal - highly entertaining account of the teenage years of Joshua
• N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy - brilliant
• Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy series (The Three-Body Problem etc.) - not a light read, but absolutely gripping
• Charles Stross - Dark State (Empire Games #2) - I’m a Stross fan and unsurprisingly enjoyed this, though his ability to model and describe the actions of a police state meant it wasn’t necessarily the fun escapist reading I might have wanted, but I persisted and will continue to
• Mackenzi Lee - The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue - really good fun - thanks to Roger Hart for the recommendation
• Iain M. Banks - The Culture (1-6)
• Nicholas Eames - Kings of the Wyld and Bloody Rose - really enjoyable fantasy full of lovable but flawed characters in a world full of rockstar-esque warbands
• James Alan Gardner - All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault and They Promised Me The Gun Wasn’t Loaded - ridiculous and snarky fun, as four Canadian housemates accidentally end up with superpowers in a world of superheroes and villains
• Skyler Grant’s The Laboratory series - there’s an AI controlling a dungeon and levelling up and fighting off intruders - good fun lightweight reading despite the shaming and violence - thanks to David MacIver for the (qualified) recommendation
• Helen Harper’s The Lazy Girl’s Guide To Magic series (1-3) - magic’s real and you can go study it in Oxford - thanks again to David MacIver
• Glynn Stewart’s Starship Mage series (1-5) - Spelljammers (almost)! - thanks again to David MacIver
• Adrian Tchaikovsky - Spiderlight - exploration and subversion of traditional Good/Evil “alignment”
• Charles Stross - The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files #9) - again a little close to home, with the US and UK governments are taken over by assorted evils - but good fun (and definitely ligher than Stross’s Empire Games!)

Non-Fiction

• Kate Fox - Watching the English - a fun exploration of the foibles and idiosyncracies of “English behaviour” - thanks to Chris Lamb for the recommendation
• Dan Harris - 10% Happier
• Jeff Sutherland’s Scrum - I didn’t really expect to like this, based on multiple negative experiences of Scrum dogma etc., but found it actually quite an enjoyable read about the general process of “doing stuff better”
• The Secret Barrister - Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken - absolutely excellent read for learning about the criminal justice system of England and Wales, and how cuts and other dubious decisions have quietly exposed the public to great risks
• Steven D’Souza and Diana Renner - Not Doing
• Zoe Quinn - Crash Override - unpleasant topic, but so important to read and understand, with good actionable advice for targets of harrassment
• Sarah Lacy - A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug: The Working Woman’s Guide to Overthrowing the Patriarchy
• Stanley McChrystal - Team of Teams - I didn’t expect to like this due to the war references, but actually quite enjoyed it - a nice illustration of the value of empowering autonomous teams to solve problems well