Category: books

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Despite, or perhaps because of it being a crappy year, last year was very much a year of reading. I enjoyed just over 80 books. And as a bonus almost nothing of my spending on reading went to Bezos’ Amazon. Dropping Amazon meant some reorganisation of maintaining my ebooks collection, and a rebalancing of how I acquire books in general.

At the start of 2025 I stepped away from Amazon for purchasing (e-)books. What looked hard at the outset, like it did when I quit Gmail in 2014, turned out to be much easier than anticipated. It does require shifting your attention to other things. There is more friction compared to when you live your entire bookish habit in a silo. In return I experienced a much bigger sense of wonder and exploration, which I realised is way more important to me. Additionally, it brought the way I experience my book store browsing and my online book browsing much closer together. That was unexpected but a big benefit.

The Numbers

I read just over 80 books, mostly fiction, a dozen non-fiction. Originally I had hoped, as I’ve hoped for years, to read more non-fiction, but on average one per month is not bad in comparison to previous years, and certainly not given the year it was and the amount of bandwidth I had for new input.

During the last year I acquired 128 books. Of those 48 were paper books, and 82 e-books (meaning I added 2 titles in both digital and paper version). Of the 48 paper books, 22 were fiction and 26 non-fiction. The 82 e-books were exactly half fiction and non-fiction.

I read fiction in the evenings, at least half an hour before I fall asleep but usually more. One or two books per week, depending on their length and time available, is the average, and has been for a number of years.

Amazon silo quit

At the start of last year I decided to leave Amazon, and get my books elsewhere. Originally when I started buying books with Amazon, it was because they were basically the only reliable online source for new English language publications, and especially for Science Fiction. My first order of paper books was in February 2008, my first e-book order with Amazon was in December 2010. From 2015 on the Dutch Amazon store exists, before 2015 I used the US store, and also regularly the German and UK store. Most paper books I buy come from local bookstores, but e-books I bought almost exclusively from Amazon.

After my decision early 2025 I did not buy anything at Amazon anymore. Except one paper book, from a used bookstore in the USA, that was delivered through Amazon fulfillment, as I found out when the parcel arrived with their logo on it.

Once I realised that what 15 years ago was a rare convenience, can now be fulfilled by many others, it was easy to quit. It did involve some work though. What helps is that, while Amazon has its own e-book format for Kindle, the rest of the world uses one single other format, epub. So, next to Amazon there are many options.

Leaving Amazon meant two things:
1) creating my own environment to manage my e-books, including ones I already have. Calibre is my go to tool now. For each book, including all the paper ones, I also have a note in my notes tool. I brought my Kindle e-books over to Calibre too. All new e-books go into Calibre, sometimes with the help of the tool Epubor. When I select a book to read and load onto my reader, I now start in my notes to see what I have, and then Calibre to get the book.
2) find new ways to acquire e-books. These days many more platforms and book stores sell e-books online. In the Netherlands, across the EU and elsewhere. For most English language e-books the Kobo platform is useful.

I use a Kobo reader and an Android e-ink device to read.

Nature outside the Walled Garden

Cutting my own path created more friction at first. Most of that however is a one-time thing to figure out and set up. For every online platform and book store you need to find out which e-books have watermarks, which have DRM, plus which type (Adobe, lcpl, or something else), and if you can handle that. Each and every platform comes with its own account to keep track of too. The book sector pretends there is no single European market, but 27 separate markets. In part that is because of differences in how prices are set at national level. In part that is because e-books are electronic services in the single market, and the VAT of the customer’s country of residence applies. When I buy an e-book in Belgium or Cyprus, I will pay the Dutch VAT rate. It seems many platforms avoid the admin of dealing with different VAT rates by only selling domestically. You get around that by lying about your address. A bit like back when you had to fill out US zip codes on various sites and everyone used 90210 as it was the only one everyone knew by heart from the 90s tv series.

Frequenting different online book platforms brings a bigger sense of wonder and exploration in return on that initial friction. While the Japanese, Ireland registered, Kobo platform is most like Amazon in that it has ‘everything’, I’ve bought on a range of different platforms this year. Each platform, especially if they have a specific niche, or if they are tied to a physical book store, has its own flavour, and shows different books on its front page or in the context of the book I am searching for.
Some of the books that serendipity brings in front of my eyes that way are in languages I can’t read, but it does mean I know it exists, and may find a translation somewhere.
Especially since I read Libraries of the Mind by William Marx (see below) I’ve come to see translation also as obscuring the untranslated, and I am more on the lookout for other languages just out of curiosity as to their existence.

In the past I felt a big divide between exploring physical bookshops and buying an e-book (on Amazon), and there was always some guilt involved in coming across a book in a store and then later buying an e-book. This has changed.

Yes, I buy at the generic Kobo platform (although the sales accrue with the big Dutch Bol platform), but there are plenty bookstores who have their own online platforms for e-books. When I was working in Berlin for a week in October, I browsed the Dussmann book store, taking notes and pictures of books I thought might be interesting. I didn’t buy anything, there are only so many books you can fit in carry-on luggage. Afterwards I check out the books in more detail online. I keep a list of things I’ve come across online and in stores that I may want to buy (also helpful to avoid buying a German edition of something I already have in English e.g.). I then buy the ones I want to have as e-book, at the store’s own online platform. It works as an extension of the experience of browsing the store, while transitioning from the physical to the e-book.
It brings browsing book stores and online together. That feeling persists across stores, where I jot down a title in one book store, see it someplace else and then buy it in yet another. It was an unexpected effect. Yet it makes the experience much more pleasant and continuous.

The books I most enjoyed in 2025

Out of the around 80 titles last year these are a few I enjoyed. Not a ranking, not a limitative list.

I came across the author Elif Shafak because of her discussing multilingualism in an article. Then I searched out her books.
There Are Rivers in the Sky I read first (which I bought for Kindle in late 2024), a beautifully written book of the past and the now. And later in the year The Island of Missing Trees (bought on Kobo), making the separation of Cyprus tangible. Beautiful language.

Playground by Richard Powers (Kobo via Bol.com), was a fun read. Life is the stories we carry and tell. This one builds an arc from oral cultures to statistically probable AI output, from friendship and turns not taken, to restoring our earth and oceans which technology has consumed. Beautifully woven and told. It also led me through references in the story about gaming and virtual words to reading Johan Huizinga’s 1938 work Homo Ludens.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (Kindle, bought December 2024), seemingly loosely inspired by the mathematician and later hermit Alexander Grothendiek. An agent provocateur for hire is tracking a group of activists in southern France. But this gig is changing her too. The weaving of different stories and layers, in social stratum, geography, mental health and alcohol abuse, and time was fun. A story I’d like to have continued reading.

Vor aller Augen by Martina Clavadetscher (paper, bought in Zürich), is a bundle of short stories centered around the women in famous paintings. Some were misses for me, some were full hits. Some felt too long, others felt too short and deserving of their own entire book.

Libraries of the Mind by William Marx, a professor of comparative literatures, was a fun and inspiring non-fiction read. It led me down the path of exploring non-fiction in languages I cannot read, and in general focus on reading as a path of exploration, not merely the act of reading a book. (paper, bought in Groningen)

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan I appreciated and enjoyed a lot more precisely because I read Libraries of the Mind by William Marx two months before it. A century from now two scholars of comparative literatures in a post-climate collapse England look back at our years to figure out if a famous poem that no-one ever saw or read, it was just read by the author to a group of people once at a birthday party, might still exist somewhere. While their students can hardly read and protest against having to read more than a handful of books during their entire education. Came across it in an Antwerp bookstore, but read it through the Kobo Plus subscription that E has.

Berghonger by Fleur Jongepier (non-fiction, paper, bought in Utrecht), I came across right after our return from a trip to the Alps this summer. The author, when not in the mountains, lives around the corner from our office in Utrecht.

Biedermann und die Brandstifter by Max Frisch (1953, e-book, bought online from a Vienna bookstore). Arsonists are wreaking havoc in town, Biedermann houses the arsonists in his attic after they wriggle their way into his life, in the vain hope they at least won’t burn his place down. Originally I read this in 1987, but since a number of years there are plenty arsonists on the move again, and getting re-elected. So a re-read was in order, and one of my first attempts to buy from bookstores online across Europe.

Rouwdouwers by Falun Ellie Koos, raw, sharp observations. While being very different I associate it with another book by Max Frisch, Homo Faber (1957), that as a teenager I read in one sitting more or less like a manual on how not to feel. I read this with a lot more compassion. Moving. (paper, bought in Utrecht)

Then we get to the SF / fantasy books, of which I will name five.

Extremophile by Ian Green (paper, bought in Utrecht), was a cool ride. Biohacking thriller set in climate-collapse London. Picked it up because it had an endorsement of Adrian Tchaikovsky, whose books I usually enjoy. This is Green’s first SF book after writing mostly fantasy. Very enjoyable.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky usually does some amazing world building in space opera settings. This is a more whimsical story in comparison, grim and fun all at the same time. (Bought for Kindle still in 2024.)

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys, a first-contact story set in a near future hope punk world. The aliens distrust you if you don’t bring your kids to negotiations. Her site says she recently moved to the Netherlands. Bought as e-book through the Dutch Bol.com platform.

The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein On recommendation by Cory Doctorow read this, and the three next volumes. A fantasy story that is also a terraforming and colonisation SF story. High-tech will look like magic to those not in the know. Two additional books have been announced. (read through the Kobo Plus subscription that E has)

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta, the 2014 debut novel of this Finnish author (e-book, through the Dutch Bol platform). Finland is very arid and part of a future-China occupation. Water crimes are punishable by death. Tea Masters have a special relationship to water. Strangely enjoyable mix of the stillness and quiet rituals of tea ceremonies with the tension of a brutal regime, while we follow a woman growing up and become herself.

I appreciate how 11 of the 13 living authors in this list have a personal website on the open web.

Looking forward to the stories that lie ahead in 2026!

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I want to find and learn about non-fiction books I cannot read.
Meaning I don’t have the languages for them.

One of the key aspects of Europe is that there are many languages. I since long believe that is a cultural and socio-economic strength and treasure. Article 3.3 of the EU Treaty and Article 22 of the EU Charter of Fundamental rights say the same thing: The Union shall respect […] linguistic diversity.

In practice people for their interaction often retreat to something overlapping, most often English.
Within the EU institutions 24 languages are in official use. Only a few of them are used as common overlap between participants. Online, globally, nothing is truly multilingual, it’s at most serial mono-lingual. Most people don’t even get to write their names properly online. (For fun I spelled my name on my website using the proper digraph ij and not ij, and my search ranking took an immediate tumble when I did.)

I read, speak and write three languages (Dutch, English, German), and can somewhat read and speak French, and can somewhat guess when reading a few more. Whenever I travel I visit bookstores, to look at what titles are available, ignoring if I could read them or not.
Of course non-fiction bestseller titles often overlap, having been translated from English usually. Other books on display are local.

Some works in other languages will be translated into others, and if that is English, German or Dutch, become accessible to me.
However, the side effect of that is that other works that are not translated become even less visible. If I count on the fact that the most relevant Polish, Swedish, or Greek works of this moment will be translated then it will reduce the probability I will go looking for something beyond that. And I won’t know if an absence of translated works means an actual absence of relevant material. Translation acts like a filter, made up of unknown curation terms. Everything else becomes ‘dark matter’ in the words of William Marx in Libraries of the Mind, outside that language.

In order to change that, at least personally, I want to add more non-fiction titles to my ‘library of the mind’, i.e. books and their core messages that I’m aware of.
With non-fiction you can get a lot from a book even if you cannot read the language. Content overview, index, illustrations and section titles already provide a good first approximation of what a book is positing, without the need of much translation or language.

So, when it is about technology, data, philosophy, futurism, communities, change, democracy, do tell me what books I should be aware of in your language. It would be great too if you can point me to online, local to you, retailers that may have it as e-book.


A bookshop in Seville, Spain (since closed). Photo Metro Centric CC BY.


A bookshop in Athens, Greece. Photo Luke McKernan CC BY SA


A bookshop in Caen, France. Photo TeaMeister CC BY

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Imagine you have a recipe for a dish you like. You copied the ingredients and instructions from a magazine once, or your mother wrote it by hand decades ago. You decide to use the recipe, and from its list of ingredients you make a shopping list. Some things you already have at home, other items you need to get. You think of the one or two different shops you’d need to go to, and list the different items in a way that follows the order in which you will walk through the store. Would you describe the recipe as creative output? And the shopping list? Yes, no, neither, or both? Which one would you think qualifies for copyright?

The recipe (both the directions and the ingredient list) is seen as a mere statement of fact. Copyright is not applicable. That’s why cookbooks usually have a clear curated selection stated in their title (‘The 50 most cherished Indian recipes from around the UK diaspora’), photos (the dish with a sprig of herbs positioned just so), and anecdotal flourishes (‘Upon entering the village I saw an old grandmother make this in front of her house, and she shared the family secret of this incredible sauce with me’). Because those elements do carry copyright. Just not the recipe as such. Take 500 grams of chopped tomatoes and cook for 12 minutes on a low fire. Add half a tablespoon of powdered cayenne peppers and stir. Serve cold.

Your shopping list is a unique thing in comparison. It contains a curated list of ingredients (excluding the things you already have), and you ordered them to align with your actual physical path through one or more shops that you mentally selected to go to. Maybe you crossed something out, and added it in a different place after first making the list. Maybe you added one or two other things that you need, as you are going to the store anyway. This does clear the, deliberately very low, hurdle for creative effort recognised by copyright law. It’s just that you as author perhaps think of it as ephemeral, trivial, and something you may well leave at the bottom of the shopping cart as you exit the store.
Some lists are of course solely statements of fact, e.g. a list of all the heads of state and the years of their reign, the planets in our solar system in whichever order, a bibliography of an author. When you add a little bit of purpose to a list, moving it to an unique expression of an idea you had, then it quickly becomes something else.

A creative artefact.
A list that is the result of some internal process of yours with some internal logic, even if it eludes another person encountering the list, is more than the sum of its items. Curation, selection and exclusion, ordering, at one or more levels of hierarchy, are determined by and express the intention and purpose of the list maker.

List maker.
It’s something E calls me every now and then, list maker. Because quite often my first response to anything that requires planning, thinking, or writing is ‘I’ll make a little list’. Because sitting down and making a first list is beginning the work. Writing a list is not the result of thinking, but part of the process of thinking itself.
An Outliner tool is a key digital list making aid (even if they all have their limitations). A good Outliner allows you to put making lists ‘on rails’ as Dave Winer put it.
Moving an item up or down, to the top or the bottom. Nesting a thing under another, or deeper still. Moving a nested item up a level of hierarchy. Hide the subitems under a thing, or revealing them. Make a connection with an element elsewhere in an outline or with/in a different outline. Turn lines into bullets into numberings and back. Switch between different types of visualisation, one of which is the outline. All made seamless with keyboard shortcuts.

In the 1968 Mother of All Demoes Doug Engelbart, showing his vision of what computers should and can do, impresses the audience when he moves things in a list around in an outliner and switches between visualisations of the list, before using another outline for a presentation. The list he makes is of course a shopping list.

Many of the lists I use emerged over time from my notes and work, a type of emergent and earned structure. Some have both an outline structure and a more visualised networked one (a tool like Tinderbox allows you to switch between views, so does Obsidian with Excalidraw). Some have a bit more complicated inner structure or are partly dynamic or help with decision making, making them small knowledge machines.

There are many types of lists I regularly make and use.

  • Checklists for various processes and events (like travel), and periodic reviews
  • Dashboards, which are (check)lists in two dimensions, that ensure I take into account all aspects of something.
  • Daylogs with links to appointment notes, listing events, links to things I found and interstitial journaling.
  • Maps of Content (or elephant paths as I call them)
  • Memory palace overviews (listing loci) of places I might use as mnemonic device
  • Card decks for spaced repetition.
  • Outlines of texts I’m writing, outlines of presentations, both with links to underlying notes and references.
  • Interests I currently have (questions, examples) and how I might see them as elements of practice, knowledge fundament etc.
  • Tasks lists, selected on context (train, home office, company office etc), effort, energy level and time needed.
  • A spreadsheet that provides, yes, my shopping list for larger parties, based on the list of participants, their dietary requests etc., based on previous parties and amounts consumed.
  • Book lists

Book lists are like any list in that they involve selection and ordering too. They are also a bit more than a creative artefact.

Book lists are libraries.
Any list of books you create is a library, even if it’s a library of the mind that you make tangible in a list.
The list of books that are in my home office book case for instance is a simple example describing that part of the actual collection of physical books in our home. But there are more book lists I work with.
All the books, whether I (still) own them or not, that I have read in a given year.
All the physical and electronic non-fiction books I own and have not read yet, by topic. Or don’t have yet but thought interesting enough to note. They form a reservoir of preselected books I thought might be of interest at some point, that can serve as a research tool. That list I call my anti-library.
Or a similar list for unread fiction books I have, to use when selecting a new book to start in.
A list of books I may want to acquire at some point (generated from what I come across online and in shops that looks interesting or fun, without buying it), a library of wishes of sorts.
A list of books I definitely do not want to own or read, which contains books I have regularly come across thinking they looked interesting, and then realising I had rejected them a few times in the past already, and also contains authors I want to avoid.

These lists overlap, interlink and morph. Most of my daily note making is in the shape of lists, where items may get extended into paragraphs. Using outliner functionality I move them around, extend, link and change them. Parts get shunted into their own notes, some becoming a note in my core personal knowledge notes, others ending up in more mundane notes. Most will remain where I wrote them. Some will become lists I use more frequently or have a structure that is a piece of personal knowledge in itself, such as the ones listed above.

Making lists is not a chore or something predefined, but key to the work of eliciting meaning from all the disparate things I encounter in a day. It allows manipulation of all the small bits of information, from which meaning and structure may emerge. It’s a way to locally reduce entropy in my notes where useful.

Make lists. As your creative artefacts, as your libraries.

left part of screen shows an outlined list, right part shows Doug Engelbart during the 1968 Mother of All Demoes.
State of the art list making, 1968. (Screenshot of the 1968 demo by Doug Engelbart of an outlining tool)

Bought an ebook through Rakuten (a Japanese company) for the first time just now.

Tiny Experiments by Anne Laure Le Cunff, has just been released.
I bought it at the Rakuten website, as it was the only non-US channel listed at the publisher’s page.

It was a few Euro cheaper there than on Bol.com, the Dutch platform that uses Rakuten’s Kobo ecosystem for their ebook sales. However I could use my Bol.com credentials to pay at Rakuten. The book showed up in my Bol.com library immediately despite not having been bought there. The file carries Adobe DRM. I downloaded it and added it to my Calibre library tool.

TIL: compare prices for ebooks between Rakuten and Bol, as they are interchangeable channels, and purchases end up in the same place.
I should probably keep a page here in this site listing the purchase options other than Amazon.