Any great books you cannot wait to read next year? Maybe something you wish to learn? Curious about all kinds of great book suggestions for 2020. Thank you for sharing! (And I wish you all a great, educational new year)
Have you read my book, Indistractable, @techstrategist? Would love to know what you think of it! I spent 5 years researching and writing a tech positive guide to the deeper psychology of distraction.
"Designing Data-Intensive Applications" is excellent, but it took me a long time to get through (it really helped that we read it in the book club at work). I am very glad I read it though - there is so much good stuff in it. I wrote a summary of it (mostly so I would learn the contents better):
https://henrikwarne.com/2019/07/27/book-review-designing-dat...
I just wish there were a Kindle edition. Eventually I'l break down and buy it but I do so much of my reading on commutes that I strongly bias towards a digital copy.
My father had a stroke a couple years ago. Read "The Brain That Changes Itself" to get a feel for what might or might not be possible. Good stuff. Had practical insights for me as well. Definitely bump it up your priority list.
That book is freaky. In a really, really good way. I loved first chapter where the lady who can't balance has her brain rewired to map alternative signals as input into the balancing process.
A book to read immediately after Guns Germs and Steel is Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu.
It's also useful to know that Diamond does not have a degree in Geography and many geographers aren't particularly on board with his ideas.
I think of him the same way I do Malcom Gladwell, a good story teller but he does this by cherrypicking anecdotes more than by a robust assessment of reality.
I've heard there is lots of controversy surrounding Guns, Germs, and Steel. The author gets chided in some historian communities on Reddit rather frequently.
I’m on the third of the LBJ series after starting them a couple years ago. While they are long they really are absolutely fascinating and hold my attention far beyond what I would have thought.
I read Seeing Like A State exactly around this time last year, and boy did I enjoy it. It somehow went well while reading Nassim Taleb’s Skin In The Game. One was an application of the other.
May I recommend reading Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life as a practical and pro tech guide for managing tech distraction
Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers
Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny
Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan
Design Patterns - Gang of Four
Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler
Programming Pearls - Jon Bentley
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler
The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt
CSS: The Definitive Guide - Eric A. Meyer, Estelle Weyl
Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers
Head First Design Patterns - Eric Freeman, Bert Bates
Code Complete - Steve McConnell
Peopleware - Tim Lister, Tom DeMarco
Clean Code - Robert C. Martin
The Clean Coder - Robert C. Martin
Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin
Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug
Functional Design Patterns for Express.js - Jonathan Lee Martin
The Surrender Experiment - Michael A. Singer
The best books I've ever read:
Principles - Ray Dalio
The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
The Effective Executive - Peter F. Drucker
Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
Influence - Robert B. Cialdini
The Startup Way - Eric Ries
The Lean Startup - Eric Ries
12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson
Measure What Matters - John Doerr, Larry Page
The Fish That Ate the Whale - Rich Cohen
The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber
The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh
Management - Peter F. Drucker
Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows
Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
Sounds like you’re diving head first into web development? Or taking it to the next level?
Careful not to burn yourself out, that is a long list of technical books, that have nothing to do with the books you’ve read and enjoyed in the past that are from other genres.
Long story short, I am an entrepreneur who sold a company and am transitioning into maximizing my engineering knowledge before diving back into entrepreneurship.
I've spent a considerable amount of time studying top performers and learned how to manage stress levels effectively. I do exercise, meditation, yoga, stretching, forest bathing, mindfulness, journaling, and other activities that battle against burnout.
I am much more worried about failing to meet my goals than I am burnout. Appreciate your concern though!
You have quite overlap between some stuff. I would recommend "Clean Code", but then skip the rest from the same author, at least for a while. While "Code Complete" is good, it's loooong and also a lot of the same stuff.
For patterns, "Head First" is a bit childish maybe, but the content is fine for someone learning to recognize patterns. "Patterns of Enterprise..." is also good, but more dry. I'd stick with one of those two. And then skip the one by GoF, unless you want to read the "original" for some reason.
"The Pragmatic Programmer" is probably the book that has shaped my work the most.
Another "Patterns" book that seems to be interesting is "Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture For Dummies" by Robert Hanmer. I've actually ordered it and look forward to read it in the coming year.
There's also "Patterns for Fault Tolerant Software" by the same author that looks pretty interesting too.
Code Complete seemed to be a book with a lot of dense, redundant content. Reading what was written had me feeling like I was reading information that could have been written by myself. Clean Code on the other hand (along with Refactoring by Martin Fowler) changed the way I write code for the better.
I'm confused by the praise for this book. I couldn't finish it. No real insight or anything technical, just fluff (Dreams + Reality + Determination = Success!).
I'm with Josh Wolfe [1]; I think Bridgewater is going to be exposed as one of the random, large hedge funds that got lucky for a spell, but is not any better than an index fund, ex-fees.
Looking at your top priority books I recalled a slide from one of Brian Will's videos on object oriented programming: "Object Oriented Programming is Bad" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM1iUe6IofM&t=326s. At around the 43:51 he pulls up a slide picturing several of these (and similar) books. Here is a rough quote: "I can tell you from personal experience of having read these books that you don't need to read them. They don't have answers, they aren't going to square the circle, and you are going to waste productive years of your life trying to live up to their ideals." Now that is just one rather controversial opinion, but we are talking about potentially wasting productive years of your life so I wanted to let you know that opinion is out there. That being said, it would probably be hugely beneficial to read a few of those books and then watch a few of Brian's videos (he has three or four on the topic) and sort out your own opinion. Also, Brian's other (not controversial) videos (dozens) are excellent for learning about programming. Also, Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think is a keeper. I thought of it last night when I was checking out at a store. I stuck my debit card into the thing, entered my PIN number, then clicked the big blue button that said "Skip PIN". The woman behind the counter said "don't worry about it; everybody does that!"
Skip design patterns, I think it locks developers into a sort of religious loyalty towards OOP abstractions. When you understand the pattern it describes you get a sort of catharsis for discovering a new interesting thing. In reality, any of these patterns are just bad despite the cleverness.
Modern programming is heading in a different direction already so it'd be better to move forward without it.
I disagree because people often don't have the luxury of working on greenfield projects.
When you are working with an old codebase, you are going to run across design patterns. You will see terms like factory, builder, observer, decorator, pool, flyweight, etc... and it's going to be helpful to know what those are. A lot of the value of design patterns was in the terminology.
Based on your Best Books list, check out David Goggins book 'Cant Hurt Me'. I found him through a podcast he did with Joe Rogan and it resonated with me on a deep personal level. It ultimately inspired me to change my life: I lost 50 lbs since, got a raise and promotion at work and travelled more in 2019 than the last 5 years.
Can't hurt me was so masochistic that after 50% of the book I started thinking why is he doing "that much". It's a good book no doubt. It makes you feel that limits are just in mind. But I've to give it a break after hearing (audible) 66% and will return to it later :)
I've begun reading The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, his first novel. It's left a very good impression so far. It's a fourteenth century murder mystery, set in a monastery, where the mystery is mostly an excuse for exploring the historical and cultural contexts, which are very interesting. Wikipedia has a nice summary: "an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory". Eco was a semiotician and a philosopher and he brings the best of that to the table in this book.
I have resorted to his phrase "what is good for an old monk may not be so for a young novice" from that book about Emacs over the years. The quote above will not be exact since I was reading it in Italian.
I've read that book two years ago and really liked it. As such, I was recommended "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk which is supposedly similar and which will be the next one to tackle (after I finish my current one: "Faust" by Goethe). After that...no idea. I don't really plan ahead like that since the decision on what book to start depends most on how I feel at the time/what kind of genre/story/setting I desire the most. All I can say is that "The Three Musketeers" by Dumas is on my radar.
I look forward to read “Meditations”[1] by Marcus Aurelius and re-read “Black Swan”[2]. On the _craftsperson_ front I’ve heard good things about “Designing Data-Intensive Applications”[3] by Martin Kleppman.
Also hope to get some good recommendations here :)
Before diving into meditations spend 15 mins researching Aurelius. Because it's written diary style without intention to publish the context triggering his thoughts isn't always explained in the text.
e.g. Parts seemed quite obsessed with death - which is in part a stoic thing - but also just because at time of writing he was already old & his health was failing.
Meditations can be a slog - he repeats himself constantly, as is the tendency in published ancient Greek diaries/correspondence. It's a great grounding for stoicism though. I'd recommend also reading the Enchiridion and Discourses of Epictetus - I found them easier to absorb.
Standard Ebooks has a nice PD edition of the George Long translation.[1] Also Elizabeth Carter’s translation of Epictetus’s The Enchiridion[2] and Aubrey Stewart’s translation of Seneca’s Dialogues.[3]
Get a few different translations of "Meditations". I recommend the ones by Gregory Hays, Martin Hammond and Robin Hard. The book is basically a collection of thoughts on various aspects of cultivating one's character and developing a "stoic" approach to whatever life may throw at you. It has no overarching framework/grand theory and thus you can read the individual thoughts in random order as the mood strikes you. It is quite practical and needs to be practiced in everyday life (with some commonsense changes to adapt to current time period).
You might also want to look into the works of Epictetus, Seneca and Cicero.
I just finished Kleppman last week. It took me since August since I was mostly reading during working hours, but I highly recommend it, especially as a companion piece if you already have a lot of familiarity with database technologies.
Meditations has some cool phrases here and there. It mostly gets very repetitive and you figure out his philosophy pretty clearly early on because he restates the same idea in hundreds of different ways. It's largely the same idea though.
My compiled list for 2020, as suggested by friends I respect and HN:
General
====
- Master & Margarita (w reader's guide)
- Why we sleep
- The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion
- The wisdom of insecurity
- The denial of death
- The three body problem (friend's advice: slow burn, stick with it)
- The dubliners
- The devils (Dostoyevski)
- The name of the rose
- Enten-Oller (Kierkegaard)
- Zero to one (Peter Thiel, recommended reading as palantir new joiner - not fantastic but has some thought provoking ideas; i.e. which very important truth would very few people agree with you on?)
Economy/finance
===
- Basic economics (Thomas Sowell)
- How an economy grows and why it crashes
- Know the city
Math
===
- Coffee time in Memphis
- Real analysis (mathematics textbook)
- Problems from the book (Halfway through this one, and I found it really enjoyable, even with only a CS bachelors)
If anyone has read any and has feedback/notes, I'm looking forward to hearing them!
My fiancée is an avid reader of fiction and canonical literature, she averages around 40 books a year. I was looking for something interesting to get her one Birthday for a change and was recommended "The Master & Margarita" by some folks on reddit. She loved it. It's a very strange book apparently but it steered her into some other Russian authors since.
I've read "Why we sleep" on your list—I average about 20 non fiction a year. It made me think about my own sleeping habits, although I believe there is a blog post out there that claims there is little scientific evidence to back up some of the medical claims made in the book, I still found it beneficial and thought provoking. The history and theory around sleep and it's role in human evolution I found particularly interesting.
I was about to read the book based on a colleague's recommendation, but the blog post and a separate article in my local newspaper debunking few of the claims made me decide against it.
I've seen The Master & Margarita mentioned a few times in this thread and for anyone who might pick it up, you'll want to familiarize yourself with popular historical Christian names and events first.
I was not raised Catholic and was a bit lost reading through some of it because I had no idea who some of the characters were or what the references meant. Made for some fun conversations with my girlfriend who read it first and was familiar with all those names and their historical context.
It was a fun book to read though. Got a bit boring for a while but the ending is great so I'm glad I stuck with it.
Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of overlap in my have-read/wants-to-read:
Master and Margarita: Very recommendable.
Three body problem: Got bored.
Enten-Eller: Delightful.
Basic economics (Sowell): Very recommendable.
How an economy grows and why it crashes: Childish and grossly simplifying. I read this one while taking a year's of economics on top of my CS. My impression is that some economists have a bad habit of not stating their basic scholastic assumptions. Sowell and Krugman are, in my opinion, not unbiased, but able to inform you at a level where you don't feel like they're also trying to brainwash you.
As for the remainder, I've taken a few notes for myself, so thanks. :-)
Since you seem to have similar taste (or people you respect?), what other books/authors have you enjoyed/would recommend? I am a big fan of Hesse, despite his works being very unrelated to anything on my list.
Each of the books in the three body trilogy started a bit slow for me, but the payoff was worth it. Opens up into a pageturner about 1/3 of the way in.
I second that. A few years ago, I began reading the first book of the trilogy after lunch to kill time, and got so bored and nearly gave up nearly 1/3 ~ 1/2. And then suddenly the idea became clear. I couldn't put it down and skip the dinner to finished it.
And the second and third books got even better. Especially the third one was mind-blowing beyond description at that time for me. I was sad when I finished them all because I didn't know when I would have a similar experience on another book/series.
Can someone tell me why Master and Margarita is a masterpiece? I’ve read it this year and it was a slow read, of basically (possibly) the author’s dreams or long mescaline trip.
It’s mostly a masterpiece because of when and where it was written, and who it was written about. If you’re lacking the context of the author and the times (most people are), it can take a long, hard time to appreciate.
Specifically, it’s written for a Soviet audience at a time when the censor was hard to get past. So the only way you could publish controversial thoughts or critiques about society was to couch it in metaphor, sarcasm, and double entendres, in a way that requires a lot of cleverness and courage on the author’s behalf. Master and Margarita is considered to be one of the peaks of this genre, because the story it tells manages to have an interesting plot and narration style, even if it’s just there to prop up the incessant jabs at contemporary soviet elites and norms.
It’s sort of like reading a comedy in another language, that’s been translated to English, but all the jokes are region specific, satirical slant rhymes that are explained in the footnotes. It’s very good, but hard to enjoy in its, originally intended, viscerally funny delivery.
I, for one, found it unbearable to read. I wouldn't recommend it. Maybe someone with the right background and who can read it in the original language could find some appreciation for it. I did not, but YMMV.
Master and Margarita is one of my "level 0" books (the small shelf of books that get dumped in the suitcase when I uproot and change continents). It bears rereading over the years.
The Dune movie isn't due until December 2020, but I figured I'd get started with Dune the book, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for a while. Maybe if I enjoy it I will get my hands on the rest of the Dune series.
I really enjoy expanded universes (I'll forgive a lot on the quality side in exchange for coloring in the world), and I also just couldn't get through the sequels.
I plan to reread a couple core works for myself. Of that list the ones that I’d recommend for others are:
Aurelius (trans. Martin Hammond)
Fear and Trembling
Man’s Search for Meaning
Tolstoy’s Confessions
Kundera’s The Art of the Novel
After doing a thorough reading of “How to Read a Book” I decided to try rereading a few books to pull more out of them.
I can’t recommend “How to Read a Book” enough - despite its anachronisms and glaring faults, it’s the only book I’ve found that has genuinely made me feel that I’ve not really read a single book in my life.
How to Read a Book has been on my list for the longest time. I might have to finally give it a go. Is the book very dense? I think one of the reasons I've held off is because I have a suspicion that it could probably be distilled down to the length of a magazine article...
I read a decent amount and enjoy it, but I feel in the end I don't get much from it. The time doesn't feel well spent. FWIW, I try to alternate fiction with non-fiction.
Read though the first section thoroughly (I recommend attempting all the strategies presented in it on the book itself), and then skim through the "how to read this type of book" section - it's really not necessary and much less enjoyable of a read IMO.
To start the year off, my casual just-before-sleep reading will be "Ender's Shadow", which is a story that isn't a prequel or a sequel to "Ender's Game", but a story parallel to it.
"What We Cannot Know", which is an exploration of all the topics that we might never be able to know, such as how to predict the weather, is the universe infinite etc.
"Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder", because it's dauntingly long and I'm feeling masochistic.
"Commodore - A Company on the Edge" because I really enjoyed "Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", so I think I'll also like seeing how another computer I really like (the Commodore 64) came about.
> "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder", because it's dauntingly long and I'm feeling masochistic.
The length on its own isn't that big of a problem. But if you want a simple idea which can be explained thoroughly in a couple of pages to be stretched out for hundreds pages in the most unbearably condescending and arrogant tone that you can imagine... then Antifragile will fit in great with your masochistic inclinations.
True that it's a simple idea. But the length of the book is worth it for the breadth it covers(economics, health, politics, etc), the implications of the idea would be otherwise hard to explore by self.
Readit News
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
Book of Proof
Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation
Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War (for a friend)
Master and Commander
Educated
Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark
Stretch goal: The Power Broker, as a warm-up for Caro's LBJ series
The Bible (perpetual, I don't get through it every year, but I get through much of it, often)
EDIT: I also hilariously underestimate the number of books I want to read. Here's one more I think is vital for my 2020:
The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
I feel like i already know what i am doing wrong re tech addiction but that i think is psychological issue with me. Not sue what a book can tell me.
Also the chapter on pain. Fascinating.
It's also useful to know that Diamond does not have a degree in Geography and many geographers aren't particularly on board with his ideas.
I think of him the same way I do Malcom Gladwell, a good story teller but he does this by cherrypicking anecdotes more than by a robust assessment of reality.
Deleted Comment
Careful not to burn yourself out, that is a long list of technical books, that have nothing to do with the books you’ve read and enjoyed in the past that are from other genres.
I've spent a considerable amount of time studying top performers and learned how to manage stress levels effectively. I do exercise, meditation, yoga, stretching, forest bathing, mindfulness, journaling, and other activities that battle against burnout.
I am much more worried about failing to meet my goals than I am burnout. Appreciate your concern though!
For patterns, "Head First" is a bit childish maybe, but the content is fine for someone learning to recognize patterns. "Patterns of Enterprise..." is also good, but more dry. I'd stick with one of those two. And then skip the one by GoF, unless you want to read the "original" for some reason.
"The Pragmatic Programmer" is probably the book that has shaped my work the most.
There's also "Patterns for Fault Tolerant Software" by the same author that looks pretty interesting too.
I'm confused by the praise for this book. I couldn't finish it. No real insight or anything technical, just fluff (Dreams + Reality + Determination = Success!).
I'm with Josh Wolfe [1]; I think Bridgewater is going to be exposed as one of the random, large hedge funds that got lucky for a spell, but is not any better than an index fund, ex-fees.
https://twitter.com/wolfejosh/status/1082470723233476608
Deleted Comment
Modern programming is heading in a different direction already so it'd be better to move forward without it.
When you are working with an old codebase, you are going to run across design patterns. You will see terms like factory, builder, observer, decorator, pool, flyweight, etc... and it's going to be helpful to know what those are. A lot of the value of design patterns was in the terminology.
That book is seriously underated.
Are you going to be happy on your death bed that you lived "approximately" a good life?
I can definitely recommend the book. It could reveal to you those aspects of your life that you feel are off the mark.
Also hope to get some good recommendations here :)
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30659.Meditations?ac=1&f...
[2]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242472.The_Black_Swan?ac...
[3]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23463279-designing-data-...
e.g. Parts seemed quite obsessed with death - which is in part a stoic thing - but also just because at time of writing he was already old & his health was failing.
If you have the time/inclination and haven’t already I’d also suggest reading Epictetus and Seneca first.
NB: My favorite of all the available Aurelius translations so far is Martin Hammond (Penguin Classics)
[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/marcus-aurelius/meditation...
[2] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/epictetus/the-enchiridion/...
[3] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/seneca/dialogues/aubrey-st...
You might also want to look into the works of Epictetus, Seneca and Cicero.
Dead Comment
It might be good to spread out reading it over a long time. Read until you find something that clicks with you. Repeat after a few weeks.
General
====
- Master & Margarita (w reader's guide)
- Why we sleep
- The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion
- The wisdom of insecurity
- The denial of death
- The three body problem (friend's advice: slow burn, stick with it)
- The dubliners
- The devils (Dostoyevski)
- The name of the rose
- Enten-Oller (Kierkegaard)
- Zero to one (Peter Thiel, recommended reading as palantir new joiner - not fantastic but has some thought provoking ideas; i.e. which very important truth would very few people agree with you on?)
Economy/finance
===
- Basic economics (Thomas Sowell)
- How an economy grows and why it crashes
- Know the city
Math
===
- Coffee time in Memphis
- Real analysis (mathematics textbook)
- Problems from the book (Halfway through this one, and I found it really enjoyable, even with only a CS bachelors)
If anyone has read any and has feedback/notes, I'm looking forward to hearing them!
I've read "Why we sleep" on your list—I average about 20 non fiction a year. It made me think about my own sleeping habits, although I believe there is a blog post out there that claims there is little scientific evidence to back up some of the medical claims made in the book, I still found it beneficial and thought provoking. The history and theory around sleep and it's role in human evolution I found particularly interesting.
I was about to read the book based on a colleague's recommendation, but the blog post and a separate article in my local newspaper debunking few of the claims made me decide against it.
You might find this useful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850
I was not raised Catholic and was a bit lost reading through some of it because I had no idea who some of the characters were or what the references meant. Made for some fun conversations with my girlfriend who read it first and was familiar with all those names and their historical context.
It was a fun book to read though. Got a bit boring for a while but the ending is great so I'm glad I stuck with it.
Master and Margarita: Very recommendable.
Three body problem: Got bored.
Enten-Eller: Delightful.
Basic economics (Sowell): Very recommendable.
How an economy grows and why it crashes: Childish and grossly simplifying. I read this one while taking a year's of economics on top of my CS. My impression is that some economists have a bad habit of not stating their basic scholastic assumptions. Sowell and Krugman are, in my opinion, not unbiased, but able to inform you at a level where you don't feel like they're also trying to brainwash you.
As for the remainder, I've taken a few notes for myself, so thanks. :-)
Since you seem to have similar taste (or people you respect?), what other books/authors have you enjoyed/would recommend? I am a big fan of Hesse, despite his works being very unrelated to anything on my list.
And the second and third books got even better. Especially the third one was mind-blowing beyond description at that time for me. I was sad when I finished them all because I didn't know when I would have a similar experience on another book/series.
Specifically, it’s written for a Soviet audience at a time when the censor was hard to get past. So the only way you could publish controversial thoughts or critiques about society was to couch it in metaphor, sarcasm, and double entendres, in a way that requires a lot of cleverness and courage on the author’s behalf. Master and Margarita is considered to be one of the peaks of this genre, because the story it tells manages to have an interesting plot and narration style, even if it’s just there to prop up the incessant jabs at contemporary soviet elites and norms.
It’s sort of like reading a comedy in another language, that’s been translated to English, but all the jokes are region specific, satirical slant rhymes that are explained in the footnotes. It’s very good, but hard to enjoy in its, originally intended, viscerally funny delivery.
The wisdom of insecurity: very very good if you are at all interested in the matters it explores
Zero to one: the whole genre of business wisdom books is crap IMHO, but at least this one is short
Basic economics (Thomas Sowell): total must read
After doing a thorough reading of “How to Read a Book” I decided to try rereading a few books to pull more out of them.
I can’t recommend “How to Read a Book” enough - despite its anachronisms and glaring faults, it’s the only book I’ve found that has genuinely made me feel that I’ve not really read a single book in my life.
I read a decent amount and enjoy it, but I feel in the end I don't get much from it. The time doesn't feel well spent. FWIW, I try to alternate fiction with non-fiction.
https://nesslabs.com/how-to-read-a-book
it's not just about reading books, of course. it's about reading any long-form content.
"What We Cannot Know", which is an exploration of all the topics that we might never be able to know, such as how to predict the weather, is the universe infinite etc.
"Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder", because it's dauntingly long and I'm feeling masochistic.
"Commodore - A Company on the Edge" because I really enjoyed "Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made", so I think I'll also like seeing how another computer I really like (the Commodore 64) came about.
The length on its own isn't that big of a problem. But if you want a simple idea which can be explained thoroughly in a couple of pages to be stretched out for hundreds pages in the most unbearably condescending and arrogant tone that you can imagine... then Antifragile will fit in great with your masochistic inclinations.
it's only 544 pages?