Not a complete record. Things I've thought about.
Subtitled "An Ambiguous Utopia." Two worlds — one anarchist, one capitalist — and neither wins convincingly. Shevek's physics (Simultaneity theory) mirrors the book's structure: the past and present alternate in chapters that collapse into each other at the end. One of the few novels that actually made me reconsider how I think about property.
About how self-reference gives rise to meaning and — maybe — consciousness. Every chapter begins with a dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise that encodes the chapter's argument in its conversational structure. Took three months. Changed how I think about loops.
System 1 (fast, intuitive, wrong in specific predictable ways) vs System 2 (slow, deliberate, easily fatigued). The anchoring effect alone explains about 40% of bad decisions I've witnessed in product meetings.
The Judge is the most terrifying character in American literature. The prose has no quotation marks, no chapter breaks, no mercy. Violence rendered without judgment or meaning — which turns out to be more disturbing than either condemnation or glorification. I put it down six times.
From Mendel's peas to CRISPR in 500 pages. Dense but not dry. The chapter on the eugenics movement is essential reading for anyone currently excited about genomic editing tools without being anxious about them.
Mathematicians in monasteries on a planet that is not quite Earth. Apparently the first 150 pages are brutal world-building, and then it becomes one of the best science fiction novels ever written. I believe this. I've been "about to start" for two years.
1,774 pages. Unfinished at Musil's death. Set in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. People describe it as one of the great novels of the 20th century and also as something that requires a dedicated three-month reading period. Waiting for the right three months.