In descending order of how much I liked them, I read in October nonfiction:

• When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, Luhrmann
• Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, Carrier
• Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together, Schneier
• Walden, Thoreau
• Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Murray
• Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, Crawford
• When Prophecy Fails, Festinger
• Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche
• Psychiatry And The Human Condition, Charlton

The Personal MBA

Generally I hate business stuff but this book presents it really well, references modern cognitive science and avoids the bullshit management speak. Were I feeling cheesy I'd call it "a business book for rationalists" (they even quote Eleizer).

Disclaimer, since I've never read any other proper business books so I don't know how someone with more domain specific knowledge would find it.

Does anyone want to share Good Read accounts? Here's mine.

Church & Regis, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves.

Choice quote:

For all the benefits its promises, synthetic biology is potentially more dangerous than chemical or nuclear weaponry, since organisms can self-replicate, spread rapidly throughout the world, and mutate and evolve on their own...

So, how should we prioritize our research and life goals? ...We could join George Mallory, who justified a huge and risky effort with the phrase "Because it's there" — referring to Mount Everest where his body was lost, frozen in ice, for 75 years. But this is to blunder along blindly...

As a general goal I propose that, as a minimum, we ought to avoid the loss of all intelligent life in the universe.

The authors mention the singularity, and Singularity University, shortly after that, and they cite Good and Vinge and Kurzweil, but they ignore Yudkowsky and Singularity Institute.