If you’re looking for a classic read, now you can head to The Greatest Books of All Time which uses a clever algorithm to calculate the ranking. 

I mostly enjoy “modern” (like post-1980) fiction so I particularly like the way you can filter using a start year because most of the top 100 are the golden oldies. A great resource!

The 1980s. Astronauts. Space Shuttles. Forbidden love.

I absolutely loved this book! 

I remember watching the first Hunger Games movie around 2013 before I'd really heard of the books, and I absolutely loved it. The dystopian story was fascinating, the casting superb. I quickly devoured the books and watched the new movies as each was released.

I was a little suspicious of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes when it came out, but again it was excellent. I only recently watched the movie version (also excellent) because I knew Sunrise on the Reaping was coming.

Clearly I'm a fanboy, but I loved this new book! I won't leave any spoilers here, but safe to say this is the second prequel to the original trilogy, this time focused on Haymitch Abernathy and the second Quarter Quell. While the plot development will be familiar, the story of Haymitch is not. He's joined by a cast of memorable characters (as with the other books) and there are subplots that bridge the gap Songbirds and the Katniss trilogy. If you loved the other books, you'll love this.

The film rights must have been signed up long before the book was finished because it's already cast and in production, with Francis Lawrence (who directed all but the first movie) at the helm. Put 20 November, 2026 in your diary.

Facebook was genuinely fun back in the day. How differently things have turned out nearly 20 years later. This book puts a terminal bullet in those optimistic, halcyon Facebook days. 

The rise of misinformation during the Trump and Brexit year culminating in the Cambridge Analytica scandal left Facebook dead to me, but from what I’ve read in this no-holds-barred insider account, it was worse than I thought. 

The book is a gripping read. After a brief, shocking early life story, we follow Wynn-Williams as she joins Facebook having pitched constantly for months to create a new Policy role. She’s an optimistic believer in the company as a force for good, which gradually gets eroded as she progresses up through the ranks. As the company becomes one of - if not the - most powerful on earth, the flaws and unethical behaviour of its leadership are exposed time and again. 

If you thought Meta was a sketchy company before, you’re almost certainly going to want to delete your Facebook and Instagram accounts after reading it. Some of what’s told is genuinely shocking. 

The author has been banned from promoting the book because Meta claims it is “false and defamatory”. Maybe it is, but given the amount of existing evidence out there about Facebook malpractice, it’s very hard to believe it’s not true. 

Bill Gates has been something of a pantomime villain throughout my life in tech, ever since I bought my first PC aged 17 (Intel 286, 4MB RAM 🔥). MS-DOS 4 was the first OS I can remember using before I experienced the relative magic of Windows 3.1, and I knew Bill G was the man behind it all. I'm not sure how, but I think it's because I used to inhale the wonderful Byte magazine we had in the library at sixth form college. I'd read he was pretty hard-nosed.

During my time at university and in my early career, I saw this ruthlessness play out as Microsoft crushed competitor after competitor – WordPerfect, Netscape, strong-arming OEMs to build the Windows' monopoly. To be fair, he did help save Apple... but mainly to help avoid the burgeoning antitrust case. 

Bill was a hard-ass businessman, but how did he get there? This is the story of Source Code – Bill’s memoir from his early life, through school and college, to the founding of Microsoft. 

Having lived through Microsoft's rise, I found this autobiography fascinating. It's a remarkable story, because he's something of a remarkable person. As in, unusual. 

Gates was a privileged, precocious child brought up by successful and progressive parents with high standards and expectations. He was certainly drilled to be successful, but he also had this extraordinary inner drive and thirst for knowledge. Any knowledge. He read an entire multi-volume encyclopaedia when he was 7. 

He also had an ability to hyperfocus. From relentless reading, to programming for 100 hours straight, that sort of thing. Those 10,000 hours (and the rest) clearly put him in good stead.

It was during his high school years (eventually, after he gave up trying to be the class clown to compensate for his tiny frame and squeaky voice) that he discovered computers and programming, a privilege few in the world were afforded at the time. He also discovered business through Paul Allen, a whip-smart senior student at his private school, which resulted in Gates and his mates taking on well-paid programming jobs including  “writing software for the entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest.

Like I say, unusual.

Gates went to Harvard (it was expected) where he founded "Micro-Soft" with Allen and created their first product – Altair-BASIC – and the rest is history.

It's a fascinating book, particularly if you're a computer history geek like me. I really hope there's a forthcoming second volume which takes us through all those tumultuous Microsoft decades – hearing Bill's take on that would make for good reading. It's given me a real appreciation for Bill and Paul's talent, tenacity and drive. They were blessed with good timing, of course, but they had the vision and innate belief to capitalise on a once in a generation moment. They made their own luck.

The New York Times has published a list of the best books of the 21st century.

I adore books but such is my meagre reading rate I’ve read only 5 of them.

I do have 5 more sitting unread on my Tsundoku bookstack though!

I’ve read a lot more books this century of course, they just didn’t make the (highly subjective) NYT list. Of those, I’d rate Barbarian Days, Invisible Child and The Sun does Shine (all non-fiction as it happens) above anything on the list I read. These are all bonafide ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ classics that really moved me. 

Add them to your stack.