I guess this qualifies as my first “best of” post for 2022. It’s a bit weak though. Bill Gates, instead of picking his five favorite books that came out during the year, picked five books that he recommended to somebody during the year. He picked Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land as the “best introduction to grownup sci-fi”, which I take to mean sci-fi books for people who don’t have enough imagine to consider reading sci-fi, but might enjoy it if they try. This is not one of my favorite sci-fi books. About all I remember is a swimming pool supposedly somewhere in the Poconos, and the audiobook reader inexplicably giving a key character supposedly from the Poconos and southern accent. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an okay book, but even if I were restricting myself to Heinlein I might pick something else, like Starship Troopers, which some “serious” people have at least heard of (and to be fair, Billy G. mentions in his post). How about Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End, which depicts a plausible near-future and is extremely entertaining and mind-blowing.

The only other book I’ll mention is a biography of Abraham Lincoln, which might be interesting. Still, this list don’t impress me much. I’m thinking old Billy Gates just didn’t do a lot of reading this year. Can’t he pay people to give him the Cliff’s Notes? (Considering he has more money than any particular gods, couldn’t he track down Cliff himself? Well, I looked this up and Cliff was Clifton K. Hillegass, and he died in 2001.)