My Book Reviews · Khalil Khabibullin

I read a lot — mostly heavyweight sci-fi and non-fiction on strategy, systems, and human behaviour. This is where I write up my reactions. Not summaries. Not ratings out of 10 (okay, sometimes ratings out of 10). Just honest notes on what landed and what didn’t.

If you want to know my taste: I like dense, complex, philosophical, and dark. If the protagonist solves everything with optimism and engineering, I’ll probably put it down. If the author makes me feel slightly uncomfortable about the human condition, I’m in.

Favourite authors: Gene Wolfe, Peter Watts, Iain Banks, Neal Stephenson, Cixin Liu, Nassim Taleb, Robert Caro.

14 books reviewed.

Book	Rating	Review
How the World Really Works Vaclav Smil · 2022	★★★☆	I really enjoyed this one (read in English). Genuinely interesting perspectives, and it made me appreciate how lucky we are. The overview of the food industry, in particular, was shocking and thought-provoking.
Vaskes -The Stoics win. Mental training to overcome life's difficulties Marcos Vázquez · 2022	★★★★	A very good primer on the principles of Stoicism. I read it because it's simple, and I simply need to read more Stoicism to practise it more.
The Space Merchants John Russell Fearn · 1950	★★☆☆	In this future world, business and advertising reign. The protagonist advertises Venus — and then ends up there himself.
The Peripheral William Gibson · 2014	★★★☆	Well worth reading. I think I need to go deeper into Gibson — so many good books, and I've read so few of them. It builds a new world of 'stubs': branches off our timeline with alternate histories where everything plays out differently. The concept of the kleptarchs is fascinating. Recommended.
The Gone World Tom Sweterlitsch · 2018	★★★☆	Libra — a journey through wormholes to the far beyond. A slightly eerie, unsettling book.
Snow Crash Neal Stephenson · 1992	★★★★	Stephenson is my favourite author and this is one of his best. It imagines the internet before the internet existed — the foresight is astonishing.
Ringworld Larry Niven · 1975	★★★☆	Four beings — two of them human — set out to investigate a baffling alien creation: a vast, Dyson-sphere-like ring.
Revelation Space Alastair Reynolds · 2000	★★★★	A very strong book, though I'd read it before. It concerns Resurgam and the life of the Amarantin people — but the more gripping thread follows a ship racing to save its captain.
Red Rising Pierce Brown · 2014	★★☆☆	See my note on the other books in the Red Rising series.
Morning Star Karl Ove Knausgård · 2021	★★☆☆	Decent overall, but really just for entertainment — a story of rebellion inside a caste-based human society (the Reaper).
Golden Son Pierce Brown · 2015	★★☆☆	See my note on the other books in the Red Rising series.
Citizen of the Galaxy Robert A. Heinlein · 1957	★★★☆	The story of an enslaved boy bought by a beggar — which turns out to be far more complex than it first seems. I liked how the stages of the story unfold and how the boy's inner life is drawn. A touch naive.
Childhood's End Arthur C. Clarke · 1953	★★★★	Probably the saddest book I read this year. Unknown aliens arrive and put an end to war and hunger — everything seems good, until it turns out this is humanity's final generation. I loved how it renders the shift in human psychology and its sense of inevitability.
A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller Jr. · 1959	★★★★	One of the strongest books I've read — maybe my favourite of that year. It follows a monk and a legacy handed down across centuries, in a world that has lost its knowledge. I loved the bleak post-apocalyptic vision and the sweep of the story.

This table is generated from my personal reading vault. See what I’m reading next →