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- Shepherd -My 10 favorite book lists for August!
Shepherd -My 10 favorite book lists for August!
Ben Fox
August 18, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 22 minutes
Looking for a good space opera?
I just finished Deep Black by Miles Cameron; it is a fantastic new Space Opera series I highly recommend (book 2).
I try to use my platform to help people consider how to live a more meaningful life. I've made mistakes, learned from them, and want to pass on those lessons.
There are many definitions of success and fulfillment and many paths to achieve it. I hope by telling my story others can avoid some of the mistakes I made.
Editor: I am a huge fan of Scott Galloway and highly recommend his list. His new book, The Algebra of Wealth, is also fantastic!
I always want to be where I am not. This was why I read sci-fi and fantasy as a child. This was why I left the country of my birth and became a professional nomad. This is why I am spellbound by mountains I will never climb and oceans I will never dive into.
Imagination can take you everywhere. It took me to the academy, where speculative literature became my scholarly field, and to the publishing world, where I am now getting ready for the launch of my eighth novel. When you are at home nowhere, you are at home everywhere–including on the summits of impossible mountains.
Editor: This is a super unique list that fantasy lovers will enjoy!
For years, I have been a voracious reader of dark psychological thrillers and psychological horror. I read several books every week, and I’m always overjoyed to be knocked sideways by an ingenious twist in a book.
As a doctor, I am captivated by people and fascinated by the depths of the human mind. For me, humans are the scariest monsters of them all. In 2020, I decided to have a pop at writing a jaw-dropper myself, and my book was born. I only hope you don’t see that twist coming!
Editor: If you love a good twist this is your list :)
I have had a long, fruitful career as a business leader, entrepreneur, and inventor in the energy and chemicals industry with seven scientific patents. I'm the founder/CEO of Chem Systems, Inc., lectured at MIT about entrepreneurship and innovation, and recently wrote a book exploring industrial inventions tracing back to the Industrial Revolution.
All inventors share the same qualities: they see opportunities, stay persistent, and maintain their faith in the value of their innovation. The books on this list celebrate those qualities and honor the innovators who embody them. The authors highlight the common threads binding past, present, and future together, showing how humanity's progress depends on innovation.
Editor: Some excellent picks from a man who knows innovation.
My first toy was a plastic dinosaur, which I took to school and it bears my toothmarks on the tail. As a young teenager, I stumbled across the Dragonriders of Pern books, and my allegiance transferred to dragons.
I find them fascinating, both beautiful and dangerous, and prefer books in which they have their own cultures and are strong characters in their own right. The novels I’ve recommended have great world building to draw you into the fascinating lives of dragons, and the humans who come to know them.
Editor: Some great fantasy books that even I haven't heard of!
I’m an Australian writer. I came to creative writing late in life but have been an avid reader since my early school years.
My fascination with mystery thrillers started with Enid Blyton and included Raymond Chandler books—not usually recommended for an 11-year-old. I have always had an inquisitive mind, asking difficult questions and seeking understanding.
Editor: If you love Carre, you will love this list!
My PhD work was in developmental robotics, which is about how a robot could wake up and learn about the world the way a human child does. The robot in my thesis work does this by building models, and, more generally, society as a whole advances when science builds ever better causal models about how the world works.
The books in this collection are about what could happen when we are 5, 10, and 100 years ahead in the causal model-building process, and they look at what happens when those models are built by robots instead of humans.
Editor: We Are Legion is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi books! This is a great list by someone who is thinking about what the world will look like in 100 years.
My first computer was an early IBM PC back when all my friends had Commodores they used for gaming. Not being able to share their games meant I had to do something else, so I read the Introduction to Basic book that came in the box. I’ve been coding, reading about coding, writing about coding, teaching about coding, and talking about coding ever since.
The world of technology moves so fast that it is hard to keep up. If you’ve taken one of my courses or listened to The Real Python Podcast, I hope you’ve heard about my passion for the topic.
Editor: Some fantastic picks if you are a dev!
I am, first and foremost, a reader. Dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction tends to have that impact on me as a reader, so I wanted to create that same impact in other readers.
Lately, my TBR has been dominated by indie-authored books, given my own decision to pursue indie publishing. I love the dystopian classics—especially Alduous Huxley, Kurt Vonnegut, and George Orwell- and I read the latest traditionally published dystopian books. But I find indie authors like the ones I’ve featured here tell compelling stories about important topics that perhaps many traditional publishers won’t publish.
Editor: A great list with up-and-coming authors!
I’ve had the urge to write stories as far back as public school. And despite encouragement from a creative writing teacher in high school, my first career ended up being corporate financial analysis. By the time I reached 59, I was (a) unemployed and unemployable (due to age) and (b) in a relationship with a wonderful woman who loved science fiction and was very creative (a former art teacher).
With her encouragement, I finished my first SF novel at just the right time to benefit from the explosion of interest in reading ebooks bought on Amazon. I’ve now written 37 novels.
Editor: I love military science fiction books, and there are some great choices here (a few you have probably never heard of)!
Three bookshelves that might interest you!
What am I working on?
Our 2024 "3 favorite reads" of the year is coming on October 1st!
The big news is that readers will get to take part this year! I hope that we get a lot more votes and help even more books get the publicity they deserve.
After that?
We are launching our book series pages (along with notifications when a new book is out, as I get annoyed by how bad Amazon is at this).
Improving and expanding our bookshelves to help readers browse books visually, see trending books, and more.
We are improving the accuracy of our genre and topic engine.
Highlights from the build blog:
I struggle to find books that I love.
It is easy to find books; you load up Amazon.com and start browsing through millions of titles. However, it is much harder to find a book that you will love.
I am tired of buying 4-star-rated books that lack characters with depth and arc. Characters are everything to me, and I am hungry for books that make me feel sad when I have to say goodbye to them. I want to find books where I delay reading the ending because I can’t bear the thought of saying goodbye to the characters.
I want to build a place to connect with readers who share this love of characters and find books through them. I don’t need a 100% success ratio; I just need to bump into a steady stream of books that other people love for the depth of the characters.
For other readers, this might be the uniqueness of the book, the world the author created, the writing style, the feelings the book evokes, or what they learned through the book. Whatever it is, I want to help readers find books they love (not just like).
I want to addict the world to reading because Shepherd helps them find books that match what they love to read (not just like), so they always have a book in their back pocket (better yet, a book in each pocket).
I struggle to find books that are served to me with a side of passion, personality, or expertise.
I love getting book recommendations from friends, but it is rare. So, I want to find more “book friends” who share my interests and tell me what books they love 🧐.
I love feeling someone’s passion for a book and being inspired to read it (like this list).
I love asking people what books changed their lives or comforted them when life slapped them hard (and I am excited to bring these formats to Shepherd soon).
Passion, personality, and expertise are much better than a star rating.
I despise star ratings for books.
Rating a book 1 to 5 stars is a travesty for humankind 🤣.
I understand the need to summarize data to assess whether a book is a match… but a book is so personal, and 1 to 5 stars is so impersonal.
I want to improve this and will launch a Book DNA review format soon.
With this format, we go further and try to define why people love that book so we can better match readers with books. I am desperate for this feature as I want to find books through these attributes (sneak peek here).
I’ve run out of authors within many subgenres and I need to grow more.
The internet (and capitalism) tends to create a winner-takes-all market, and we need to fight this to get a new and bigger generation of authors. I don’t want to help grow the next Michael Connelly; I want to help grow the next 100 Michael Connelly’s in every subgenre.
How can I help new authors sell enough books to stay motivated and write more?
How can I help authors who are getting good reviews get more and more publicity without having to spend 20 hours a week spewing out nonsense on social media?
How can I spot trending books and push them to readers who will love that book (not just like), thus helping word-of-mouth spread?
What can I do to help authors work full-time on their writing? How do you do that in this modern age when a monopoly controls the industry and publishing is struggling so badly?
Books are the best part of humanity, and selling them like toothpaste is a war crime 🫢.
When I look for a new book online, it feels soulless. Online bookstores sell books like toothpaste or powdered gravy mix, and something about that is profoundly wrong.
Books are magic.
Books are imagination fuel.
Books change how we see the world.
Books change the direction of our lives.
Books transport us across time and space.
Books let us see the world through another person's eyes and emotions.
I believe they are one of the biggest net positives in the world.
Carl Sagan said it best in Cosmos:
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
How can I help readers find books at the exact time they need them most in their lives?
How can I build an experience that sells books in a way that reflects how magical they are?
How can you build the magic of discovery and exploration into a screen?
Books build better people and increase our appreciation of complexity 😵💫.
Show me someone who loves to read, and I’ll show you someone who is likely only an asshole 5% of the time (an acceptable level IMO).
Sure, your boss might be a neo-nazi who loves reading about the newest conspiracy theory, but statistically, people who read “have higher empathy, better social ability, have better perspective, and a clearer understanding of human nature” (study 1, study 2, study summary 3, and more).
The more people read the better results for all of us.
What am I reading?
I just finished...
A fantastic historical fiction about the Baltic Crusades. It is book 2 in the series and has not yet been published, but I will share it when it is!
I am reading...
Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World is a fascinating account of a group that is part of our DNA. Yet we know little about them because they left little physical evidence. This book is back in France, but I look forward to finishing it once I get home.
A Pilgrimage to Eternity - I love books about pilgrimage routes, and this one has been lovely so far. I did part of this route on my bike a few years ago.
Blitzed - A book about all the drugs the German soldiers and Nazi party were doing in WW2 (and Hitler). The story gets more and more insane as I wrap it up. It seems like the last two centuries might need to be renamed “white people discover mind-altering substances and lose their damn minds.”
Daughter’s War is book two of the Blacktongue Thief fantasy series. Book One was one of my favorite fantasy books of the last few years. This one is slower so far, as nothing happens in the first 60% of the book. It is a beautiful world, though, and fantastic writing. I am still chugging through this one.
What have I been up to?
Moving, unpacking, and settling into our new home has made for a very intense summer. In August, we flew to the USA to clear out an old storage unit from our time in Colorado and visit family and friends. We have ten more days before we head back home. I look forward to returning to our new home (and unpacking fully).
P.S. A picture from my time in Colorado last week.
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