21 Apr 2025
1.The Qualified Sales Leader – John McMahon
Elite B2B sales strategies from a veteran. Super tactical.
2.Amp It Up – Frank Slootman
On scaling performance, culture, and urgency. No fluff.
3.The Cold Start Problem – Andrew Chen
Growth tactics from network effects to go-to-market. Useful for platform plays like Kaltura.
4.Pitch Anything – Oren Klaff
Sharp psychological edge for sales pitches and negotiations.
5.Loonshots – Safi Bahcall
Balancing innovation vs. execution in complex organizations.
6.Build – Tony Fadell
Practical product wisdom from the guy behind the iPod and Nest.
7.Ultralearning – Scott Young
Rapid skill acquisition—useful for leveling up fast (e.g., your Python).
8.The Great CEO Within – Matt Mochary
Operational systems thinking, useful even if you’re not a CEO.
1.Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir
Sci-fi with a problem-solving protagonist. Feels like coding in space.
2.The Three-Body Problem – Liu Cixin
Big ideas, AI, physics, civilization-level stakes. Dense but rewarding.
3.The Martian – Andy Weir
Engineering brain + survival narrative = addictive read.
4.The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Strange, layered, and meditative. If you want something more introspective.
5.Neuromancer – William Gibson
The OG cyberpunk classic. Dense but visionary.
6.Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
Dystopian, funny, fast-paced. Feels like Silicon Valley on acid.
7.Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
Big, vivid, philosophical, adventurous.
8.The Midnight Library – Matt Haig
What-if scenarios + life regrets + meaning. Easy but thought-provoking.
1.Blindsight – Peter Watts
First-contact sci-fi meets consciousness theory. Deep and dark.
2.The Power of the Dog – Don Winslow
Narco thriller, epic in scope, brutal and brilliant.
3.Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Quiet dystopia, emotionally devastating.
4.Dark Matter – Blake Crouch
Fast-paced multiverse thriller. Like a movie in your head.
5.Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Ambitious and intricate. Six interwoven timelines.
6.American Dirt – Jeanine Cummins
Gritty, propulsive story of escape and survival.
7.The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
Psychological thriller with a clever twist.
8.The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Sparse, haunting, unforgettable.
9.Annihilation – Jeff VanderMeer
Trippy, surreal, and atmospheric sci-fi/horror.
10.The Sympathizer – Viet Thanh Nguyen
Literary spy novel with biting political commentary.
sci-fi or adjacent, but light enough for evenings. Here’s a curated list:
1.The Humans – Matt Haig
Alien takes over a human body. Funny, heartwarming, philosophical.
2.The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers
Low-stakes space travel with great characters. Cozy sci-fi.
3.To Be Taught, If Fortunate – Becky Chambers
Short, hopeful, and thoughtful space exploration.
4.Upgrade – Blake Crouch
Gene-editing thriller. Fast, accessible, popcorn sci-fi.
5.Recursion – Blake Crouch
Memory, time, identity. Page-turner with a twisty plot.
6.Fuzzy Nation – John Scalzi
Legal drama + alien critters. Light and fun.
7.Redshirts – John Scalzi
Satire of Star Trek tropes. Self-aware and funny.
8.All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) – Martha Wells
Snarky security bot just wants to be left alone. Quick and addictive.
9.Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel
Time travel, pandemics, but written like a dream.
10.The Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi
Big monsters, snappy dialogue, pure entertainment.
Blindsight (Firefall Book 1) Kindle Edition
by Peter Watts (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 6,854 ratings
Book 1 of 2: Firefall
See all formats and editions
Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight
Two months since the stars fell...
Two months of silence, while a world held its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there.
Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blindsight-Firefall-Book-Peter-Watts-ebook/dp/B003K15EKM/ref=sr_1_1