Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (1929)

This book was my first Thomas Wolfe novel, which feels embarrassing to admit because he was my mother’s favorite author. I still have her copy of You Can’t Go Home Again sitting on my shelf, untouched. In high school American Literature we read only excerpts, but we did learn the colorful details: Wolfe was a giant of a man (6'6", 2m), used a refrigerator as a writing desk, filled yellow legal pads with a Cross pen, writing just 3–4 words per line, every third line, and shipped entire orange crates of manuscript pages to his editor, who would eventually telegram him to stop so they could carve a book out of the mountain of prose.

Look Homeward, Angel is a classic “roman à clef” — essentially Wolfe’s own life turned into fiction. The protagonist Eugene Gant is a thinly veiled version of Wolfe himself, and the large, chaotic family, the small Southern town (based on his native Asheville, North Carolina), and many of the events are drawn directly from his upbringing, though heavily exaggerated and melo-dramatized.

The novel is driven by Eugene’s intense longing for meaning, his obsession with time, memory, and mortality, and a soaring, almost mystical romanticism. Wolfe’s prose is dense, lyrical, and richly descriptive — it frequently reminded me of Proust in its lush detail and of Thomas Hardy in its emotional weight. The writing is immersive and often beautiful, even if the book itself is very long and occasionally meandering. This book is a powerful, passionate, and deeply personal coming-of-age novel. It is worth reading for the sheer force of the language alone.

4/5 stars.

Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2026)

This fourth volume in Tchaikovsky’s wildly inventive Children of Time space opera series continues the story with a universe overflowing with grotesque, wildly imaginative biology. This time we encounter planetary-scale living systems, distributed intelligences, and growth rates 50 million times faster than physics would allow. The rapidly growing and morphing biology strongly reminds me of Neal Asher and his vivid, vivisection-like obsession rapid transformation.

Getting past the hard-to-swallow science, the story and character arcs remain strong. Tchaikovsky writes compelling characters you end up genuinely caring about, even when the overall tone stays bleak and pessimistic. I do not enjoy dystopian stories as a rule, but the quality of the writing and the depth of the personalities kept me invested in what happened to them.

That said, the heavy pessimism and the particular brand of biological horror on display this time made this my least favourite entry in the series so far. It is still well-crafted and thought-provoking, but it did not click with my taste.Skip this one unless you are a committed fan of the series and do not mind dark, visceral, and deeply strange far-future biology.

3/5 stars.

A brief history of intelligence by Max Bennett (2023)

This was another recommendation from Senthil that had been sitting in my queue since December 2025. I expected the book to focus heavily on AI, using neuro-physiological and neuro-anatomical insights to guide the development of more human-like, self-improving systems. Instead, it delivers a broad evolutionary history of intelligence itself.

Bennett traces how life on Earth gradually evolved the ability to survive and thrive, beginning with social "politics" among early organisms and the manipulation of their environment. What we call cognition, sentience, qualia, and even our (possibly illusory) consciousness emerge as accidental side-effects of traits that simply proved useful for survival and reproduction. Intelligence, in this view, is less a grand design and more a useful byproduct of fitness.

I enjoyed the book a lot. Bennett does a good job addressing counterfactual evidence and the main controversies surrounding his claims. The references to AI and software are present but clearly secondary. When he does touch on artificial intelligence, he frames it as simulations of biological processes on our planet, which may not always be the optimal path for building the systems we actually want.The book is a thoughtful and well-reasoned exploration of how intelligence arose in nature.

5/5 stars.

Ensh*ttfication by Cory Doctorow (2025)

I've been skimming Cory Doctorow's daily links and rants on Pluralistic for years, so I walked into this book already fluent in most of his ideas. What surprised me was how much richer and more coherent everything became once he had an entire book to breathe. Ensh*ttfication is the definitive deep-dive into the "Ensh*ttocen" - the Great Ensh*ttening era we're all living through, laying out his core theses with far more historical context, evidence, and narrative force than any blog post could manage.

The book is long, dense, and occasionally meanders into broader territory: labour rights, liberty, social justice, and the politics of technology. I actually loved those side-quests. They served as powerful reminders of how extraordinarily lucky I am to have the freedoms and tools I do. Doctorow's sales pitch for Mastodon and the Fediverse was particularly interesting, even if reality has already moved on: walled gardens have largely won, gateways have been shut down, and most of the people I actually talk to will never install Mastodon. (The one bright exception I'm excited to try is matterbridge — https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge. The universal chat client (theoretically) lets one client bridge WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Teams, and more. If I ever find the time, I'll clone, build, and try it.

At its heart, this book delivers a razor-sharp diagnosis of exactly how enshittification works: a three-stage pathology that turns once-great platforms into "giant piles of shit." First, services are genuinely good for users to draw them in. Then they abuse those users to please business customers (think ad-choked feeds and algorithmic manipulation). Finally, they squeeze the business customers themselves to extract every last drop of value for executives and shareholders. Doctorow backs this up with devastating case studies—Facebook, Amazon, Google, Uber, TikTok, and more, showing how weakened antitrust rules, regulatory capture, lock-in tactics, and "twiddling" algorithms created today's techno-feudal system of rent extraction. He doesn't stop at diagnosis; he also maps out concrete cures: aggressive interoperability mandates, breaking up monopolies, stronger data rights, and rebuilding the open internet we once took for granted.

I don't always agree with Cory's values or speculations, and I occasionally have counter-evidence that undercuts some of his stronger claims. Yet I never resent the ride. His extreme points of view and the mountains of data he cites are consistently thought-provoking and valuable. The book is daunting in scope, but it's also comprehensive, well-crafted, and deeply informative. I'm genuinely glad I ploughed through every page.

The book is highly recommended if you want to understand the forces quietly degrading the internet (and society) around us.

5/5 stars.

X Minus One Old Time Radio Episodes (1955)

Similar to the Perry Rhodan space opera archives over which I stumbled and am now enjoying in serialized book format, the old Astounding stories from the 1950s were dramatized into Radio plays.  These Radio Plays were digitized and made available by fans on the public Internet. Some of the stories are timeless and others I had read are very entertaining as audio theater.  4.5 Stars.

The Winter Queen (Азазель1 Azazel) by Boris Akunin (Борис Акунин)

This book was recommended by Swiss relatives who loved the mystery and spy thriller, as well as the historical accuracy of the events.  The AI's all agree that the English translation is slightly better than the German translation so I read the English one.  I agree that the somewhat contrived and "James Bond"-style super-spy vs super-villain thriller events are entertaining.  The Mystery and historiography are also very good.  However, I found the spy vs spy stuff and some of the cartoonish one-dimensional characters a little off-putting.  I may read more books in the Akunin series, but I did not really get deeply immersed in this one. The book would likely work better as a graphic novel or serialized comic book series.  3/5 Stars.

The Internet Con by Cory Doctorow (2022)

This book is a quick read and a precursor to Cory's book on Ensh*ttification he wrote later. This book has some details of the interesting political, legal, and economic underpinnings that incentivize the current state and trends in data sovereignty and computing.  Many of the topics in the book will be familiar to, and redundant for readers of Corey's daily blog entries.  For me personally it was good to get a comprehensive summary in one short volume.  I think there is a little too much hand-wringing, ranting, and Sturm und Drang than specific, prescriptive remedies for actions we should take. But the book is quite informative and short. 3/5 Stars.

Update zu Perry-Rhodan-Büchern

Ich habe mich weiter durch die Perry-Rhodan-Bücher gearbeitet, nachdem ich die Reihe im Dezember 2025 entdeckt habe.

https://mitchwyle.blogspot.com/2025/12/perry-rhodan-zwei-milliarden-hefte-und.html

Die Serie bewahrt die Science-Fiction-Tropen und Handlungs-Mechaniken des Goldenen Zeitalters, die ich schätze, und bleibt trotz der in die ferne Zukunft projizierten Technologien der 1950er Jahre zeitlos.

Die Bedrohung der vollständigen Auslöschung allen Lebens auf der Erde schwebt weiterhin über unseren unerschrockenen Helden, während sie ihren Weg fortsetzen! Sie entdecken und entdecken erneut uralte Besucher unseres Sonnensystems aus der Zeit vor zehntausend Jahren und entschlüsseln deren Geheimnisse. Die Charakterentwicklung ist statisch und gegenüber den Geschichten zweitrangig, doch die Handlungen sind dennoch kraftvoll und unterhaltsam.

Die optimistische Space Opera lebt fort. Ich lese weiterhin der Reihe nach die ursprünglichen Sammlungen von 1961. Der lineare Fortschritt durch 64 Jahre wöchentlicher Veröffentlichungen übersteigt mein Lesetempo im Deutschen bei Weitem, aber die frühen Bände sind angenehme, leichte Lektüre. Wenn Sie ebenfalls Ihr eigenes Leseabenteuer beginnen, kann ich für die Qualität der nächsten fünf Bücher bürgen, und ich verspreche, in diesem Blog weiter zu berichten, während ich tiefer in die Saga eintauche.

4/5 Sterne.

How to Survive in the Woods by Kat Rosenfeld (2026)

The atmospheric tension Kat Rosenfeld maintains is excellent.  The story takes unexpected turns as the depth and breadth of the main character's past unfolds. The story contributes fun, new story dimensions to the usual 'prepper' culture. The story has another murderous landscape where every character plots to kill someone with treacherous plans-within-plans.Despite the story's reliance on established tropes, I found the mystery and momentum infectious.  The harsh New England woods are a visceral metaphor for the protagonist's survival against her own history. The environment demands a resilience that mirrors her social endurance.

4/5 Stars

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (2010)

Matt Ridley constructed a compelling narrative that stands as one of the two most significant works I have encountered this year. I really enjoyed the rigorous data and the unapologetic polemics that define the whole book; I appreciate the way the author wove together paleontological observations and data-driven conclusions regarding the evolution of human commerce. This specific approach reminds me of the methodology used by Vaclav Smil: both authors dissect the intricacies of innovation and ethics through the lens of material history. I found the modernization of the classical concepts found in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty to be particularly deft. This intellectual lineage connects Ridley to other contemporary optimists such as Steven Pinker and Gregg Easterbrook, yet Ridley distinguishes his work through a unique synthesis of evolutionary biology and market theory.

This ideological framework thrives because of the author's nuanced libertarianism: he champions a sophisticated balance between individual spontaneity and the specific government regulations that he deems essential for a functioning society. I observed a high degree of precision in his distinction between bureaucratic stagnation and the organic growth of "ideas having sex"; this metaphor illustrates the combinatorial nature of human progress with remarkable clarity. The text avoids the trap of attributing societal failures to mere malice; instead, I believe Ridley correctly identifies these setbacks as products of institutional friction or the "pessimism bias" that haunts modern discourse. I craved more of this analytical rigor as I navigated his arguments concerning the historical rise of living standards.

I love the way Ridley deconstructs the Malthusian traps of the past: he demonstrates how human ingenuity consistently overcomes resource constraints because of our unique capacity for specialized exchange. I found his "pro-market but anti-corporatist" stance to be a vital distinction; this position prevents the book from descending into a simple partisan screed. I am particularly fond of the rhythmic flow he established between broad historical surveys and specific technological anecdotes. Because of this structural harmony, the dense economic theories remain grounded in tangible human experience. I long for more popular science writing that maintains this level of intellectual intensity while remaining accessible to the curious layperson.

I consider this book an essential addition to the canon of optimistic literature. The author provided a refreshing antidote to the reflexive doom-mongering that permeates the current cultural zeitgeist; I recommend this masterpiece to anyone seeking a data-backed justification for hope. This conclusion feels earned rather than forced. I believe the strength of the evidence presented makes the optimistic outlook not just a preference, but a logical necessity.  Thanks to Senthil for recommending it!

5/5 Stars.