Q3 Book Review
How to Win Friends and Influence People — 10/10
This is one of my favorite books so rereading it this quarter was great. I feel like this is one of the most timeless books ever written and each time I read it I keep shaking my head in agreement. Inspiring people and great leaders live by the Dale Carnegie whether they know it or not.
The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller — 9/10
This book is referenced a lot in film and story analysis and it finally pulled me in. John Trudy breaks down stories into their component parts and gives a lot of great mental models for thinking about stories. Whether you’re a writer or a businessman there’s something to learn from this book.
Confessions of an Economic Hitman — 8/10
This has to be the most exciting non-fiction book I’ve ever read. It documents the life of one of America’s many economic foot-soldiers tasked with advancing the US’s political and economic interests overseas. I couldn’t stop reading this book and the only reason why I did not rank it higher is that it becomes a little preachy at the end.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living — 8/10
I got into a Dale Carnegie fetish and read this book for the first time after WF&IP. This book is full of strategies for ending rumination, putting the past behind you, and reducing overall anxiety. It’s certainly not the be all end all on the subject like WF&IP is on relationships, but it’s still an enjoyable and short read.
Behave — 8/10
Behave is an amazing piece of work from Stanford’s Robert Sopolsky. It add layer of science on top of human behavior and helps the reader understand why we do what we do. This book is so far reaching that you learn a lot of genetics and cellular biology along the way. One of the biggest takeaways I left with was that behavior is completely context dependent on non-obvious things we rarely think about.
A Beautiful Question — 7/10
This book talks about the symmetry and beauty in the laws of physics and nature. It’s dense, very dense, but you leave with a lot of striking questions like you should after a good physics book.
The Tacit Dimension — 7/10
I paid by respects to polymath Michael Polanyi by picking up one of his books. The Tacit Dimension probes the differences between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. His key observation is that some knowledge transcends the confines of a logical/algorithmic ontology. The book was a lot of fun to read and ruminated over things I’ve thought about over the years, but it’s hard to get through and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.
Homo Dues — 6/10
After reading Sapiens and hearing people in the Bay Area raving about this book I expected it to be a lot better. It was half Sapiens rehash and a lot of weird claims based on questionable assumptions. I didn’t disagree with everything, but reading this didn’t feel nearly as enriching as I had hoped.
Machine Platform Crowd — 6/10
Same here — expected more after the Second Machine Age.
