Bill Gates shares holiday reading list
Image: CNN
Almost every year Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates lists books he has read and recommends them on his blog. This year Bill has shared what he calls his “holiday readers”. He shares he has read a lot this year but these five books stood out most.
1. A Thousand Brains: A New theory of intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. “Few subjects have captured the imaginations of science fiction writers like artificial intelligence. If you’re interested in learning more about what it might take to create a true AI, this book offers a fascinating theory.” Hawkins was the co-inventor of the PalmPilot device back in the 90s.
2. The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race, by Walter Isaacson is the second book that gates recommends. “The CRISPR gene editing system is one of the coolest and most consequential scientific breakthroughs of the last decade,” says Gates. The author does a good job highlighting “the most important ethical questions around gene editing.”
3. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. “This book makes me think about what life with super intelligent robots might look like-and whether we’ll treat these kinds of machines as pieces of technology or something more.”
4. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. “If you’re a Shakespeare fan, you’ll love this moving novel about how his personal life might’ve influenced the writing of one of the most famous plays,” he noted.
5. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It is a “wild tale about high school science teacher who wakes up in a different star system with no memory of how he got there.” Gates found this to be a fun read and finished it in one weekend