Month: April 2018

2017 reading roundup

In 2017 my reading volume was considerably higher than previous years. With this much reading volume my brain started to fatigue and it shows in 2018. 2017 was also a year of a big change as I switched my job.

Engineering

The first quarter of the year was spent preparing for the programming interviews so I was going through some technical books.

  • NSHipster: Obscure topics in Cocoa and Objective-C
  • The NSHipster Fakebook
  • The Algorithm Design Manual
  • The Pragmatic programmer

The first two were iOS focused and the 3rd one is more geared towards computer science.

Space exploration

On a more interesting subject, I was able to cover some ground on space exploration.

  • Astrophysics for people in a hurry
  • Failure is not an option
  • No Dream is too high

Gene Kranz stole my heart this year with his epic adventures as the director of several key NASA missions including the infamous Apollo 13 mission. Neil DeGrasse Tyson did a wonderful job in ‘Astrophysics for people in a hurry’ and I thoroughly enjoyed it. ‘No Dream is too high’ by Buzz Aldrin was a major disappointment primarily because Buzz sounds too pompous and arrogant in the book. I’ll put “Failure is not an option” up there with “Astronaut’s guide to life on earth” and “starman”. I am continuously amazed and fascinated by their adventures and want to continue this category for years to come.

Biographies

  • Hit Refresh
  • The Art of Learning
  • Saint Mother Taresa of Culcutta
  • The Everything Store

In 2017, I tried to randomize my sample of biographies. No longer am I just going to focus on Tech biographies – but don’t expect radically different subjects either. I really enjoyed ‘The everything store’ about Amazon (it was more about Jeff Bezos than Amazon though). Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella was a refreshing change in pace from the cut-throat Silicon Valley experience to a more mature Seattle/Microsoft setting. There were a lot of places where I could relate to Satya and its ‘refreshing’ to hear the POV from inside microsoft. The Art of Learning is about the life of a chess champion (and he has been good at other things aswell). Book about Mother Taresa was fairly disappointing because it was too ‘Christianity’ based.

Parenting

  • How to raise an adult
  • How Children Succeed
  • Hero: become the strong father your children need

I want to make a claim: ‘any’ book you read is essentially improving you as a parent and parenting books specifically don’t really make people better parents. Yes they have really good advice and sometimes let you see things from different perspectives but nothing compares to an empathetic, knowledgeable parent with a growth mindset, who shows children that learning is a life long process – that parents don’t always know everything and that anything can be learned.

‘How to raise an adult’ is a phenomenal book. It starts with a lot of scolding especially for younger parents. This ranges from overparenting and setting expectations too high from kids which spoon feeding them everything. While I don’t agree with the tone of the book: taking an extremist approach to cull an extremist way of parenting – but I get the point. It has changed my mind and I would urge looking for some serious parenting advice for the long run to read this book.

‘Hero’ was a nice book, too – though I wouldn’t exactly recommend it unless you don’t have specific parenting agendas to complete first. Its about the author’s father and what she thought of him. ‘How children succeed’ was so boring I put it down after a few chapters.

Self help, Productivity

In this category, books I recommend:

  • Relentless
  • Superhuman by Habit
  • Deep Work
  • Managing Oneself
  • Ikigai

Books I don’t recommend:

  • Change Anything
  • 5% More
  • Start with Why
  • Standout 2.0

Business

  • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the great American Innovation
  • Chaos Monkeys

The Idea Factory should be a required reading for computer scientists, all Americans, all engineers and anyone interested in innovation and technology. This is an amazing book about the amazing inventions and discoveries made at Bell labs.

Chaos Monkeys was apropriate to read before joining Facebook, right? It chronicles the author’s journey from Wall St. to y-combinator and finally Facebook. He doesn’t hold any punches back and has a great style of writing.

  • Dealers of Lightning
  • Lean: Quickstart Guide

These two books were subpar and I wouldn’t recommend them.

Sociology

  • Gun Germs and Steel
  • Sapiens
  • Homo Deus

I could write a separate blogpost about this topic and in particular the books i read in 2017. I’m kind of disappointed that I picked two of Yuval’s books in the same year based solely on the populatity with the younger crowd and advertisment. Guns, Germs and Steel hands down beats Sapiens by a mile. Sapiens is amateur work in sociology, GGS is text book level stuff. It must be a required reading in schools.

As for homo deus, Yuval shows that he doesn’t have a great story line or way of writing so he blabbers abount any subject here. Common themes include religion bashing, etc. You would be better of reading’ The future of mind’ by Michio Kaku.

Fiction

  • The sun also rises
  • Exit West

I had high expectations from Hemingway but somehow I just don’t get his dry writing style, especially in this book.

Mohsin Hamid disappointed me with Exit West. Too many show-offsy lines and a lack of coherent plot.

Other

  • Long story short
  • Option B
  • Lean In

These three books are amazing in their own right. Margot is awesome on stage and the way she demystifies the magic of story telling in ‘long story short’, its inspiring.

Sheryl is a very thoughtful writer and a person full of life and stories. Both Lean In and OptionB are great samples of thorough writing and stories.

  • The daily rituals
  • Hal Higdon Half Marathon Training
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Creation
  • Status Update

Not much to see here. Bitcoin came and went and as most of the people round me were betting on its worth, I kept away. Tried to learn more about it but I just don’t click with Cryptocurrencies yet. ‘Creation’ was something I picked from Jeff Bezos’s biography The Everything Store but somehow found it really hard to read. Other books here are meh.

So onwards to 2018!