sruchti's Notes
2026
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI
How to Think about Artificial Intelligence--Before It's Too Late
By Cory Doctorow“ Far more important than what a gadget does is who it does it TO and who it does it FOR.”
As mind-boggling and succinct as everyone says it is. Cory Doctorow clearly explains how tech oligarchs have inflated the value of AI to perform the thin veneer of growth at all costs, adjusting their own metrics and manipulating the data for the sake of investors, who in turn are bamboozled into investing billions, and the cycle goes round. It’s a game of convincing people (specifically “bosses”) that AI is a way for companies to reduce or eliminate their wage bills through automation. An unholy ouroboros. The finances are jaw-dropping. And most of the valuation is fake. Entirely made up.
On the Calculation of Volume (Book V)
By Solvej Balle and Jennifer RussellBalle’s series defies normal metrics or measurements for what defines a “good book”. Just as Tara Selter and her compatriots live outside of time, endlessly in the 18th of November, Balle’s septology of novels lives outside of my judgment. There is only reading, and pondering, and wondering what will happen next… if anything…
The Queen of Swords
By Jazmina BarreraWinner of the 2025 Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation
When Tomorrow Burns
By Tae KellerHow much can I possibly love this book? Tae Keller brings to life three characters with storylines so complex and real that each could carry a novel of their own. When Tomorrow Burns is wonderfully Seattle-centric, in a way that serves and loves the city not as a placeholder, but as a story that could only take place in the upper echelons of the Pacific Northwest. Tae's skill, intensity, and empathy about how we communicate with kids about the climate crisis is both remarkable and discerning, taking into consideration the many difficulties of being a young person that are, too, world-shattering, and sometimes more immediate than an uncontrolled forest fire. This is a book that I guarantee will be taught in nearly every age-appropriate classroom in the Northwest, and elsewhere. What a wonderful, remarkable story—with cameos from the Seattle Public Library and Seattle's famous underground tour!
Enshittification
Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do about It
By Cory Doctorow
Extinction
By Thomas Bernhard
Down Time
By Andrew MartinAndrew Martin's latest novel is nothing less than stunning, with some of the best writing about being in your 30s and surrounded by writers. Exceedingly clever, with a menagerie of semi-despicable, horny, complex characters, DOWN TIME is the rebuttal to the misconception that a decent COVID-novel does not exist. Once I picked up this book and started reading, I could hardly leave it; when I did, Andrew Martin's voice remained in my head. If his books get any better, I may have to abandon reading altogether.
Before the Flood
A Gaza Family Memoir Across Three Generations of Colonial Invasion, Occupation, and War in Palestine
By Ramzy BaroudRamzy Baroud frames his history of Palestine through three generations of his own family—from village life in Beit Daras before the Nakba, to May 2025, at which point Israel's latest war on Palestinians had killed at least 52,000 people and wounded 118,000, nearly all of Gaza in rubble. It has been said that all art aspires to be music. Baroud's symphony of voices—joyful, proud, brave, unyielding voices—shows a history of Zionism within its violent, colonial context, and how even after repeated periods of genocide, the Palestinian people have endured over and over again. The stories Baroud brings to light through incredible sacrifice from family members who, even today, live and have died in Gaza while being chased by Israeli armaments, are nothing short of astonishing. As Ramzy writes: "The Palestinian people will eventually win their freedom because they have invested in a long-term trajectory of ideas, memories, and communal aspirations. . . if the oppressed, the Indigenous of the land, are not fully vanquished, they will rise, resist, fight, and win back their freedom."