The deeply reflective thought process of a young neurosurgeon who is faced with his own diagnosis of terminal lung cancer when his life was supposed to be just taking off.
This book really touched my. I could only read it in segments, to have some of the chapters sink in and also let my emotions come and go.
The writing itself was simply beautiful. Serious and thought-provoking, yet life-affirming and also happy in places where death usually overshadows everything else. Probably one out of every three paragraphs could simply be printed, framed and read over and over again.
Grand illnesses are supposed to be life-clarifying. Instead, I knew I was going to die -- but I'd known that before. My state of knowledge was the same, but my ability to make lunch plans had been shot to hell.
If I am being totally honest with myself, I think I have mostly avoided really thinking about death up to this point in my life. Maybe this book has not changed that completely, but it has definitely shone a light on a topic I have conveniently glanced over most of the time.
A book that, put simply, describes in many ways how randomness plays a large role in the world around us, even though it might often look like skill (no, it was luck) or determination (no, it was luck) or causality (no, randomness).
Pro:
It made me think about concepts that sounded trivial at first, but when connected to something I know, I had some revelations.
Taleb connects a lot of different disciplines (philosophy, mathematics, economics and, I guess, some more).
In many places, I really like his writing and way of expressing things.
Con:
This was written as a stream of thoughts (Taleb views himself as an essayist). What might be meant to appear deep and clever was just lacking structure and clarity in places.
I am sometimes bugged by the extreme examples he chooses, where a trader loses everything not only because randomness hits, but because in their private life they have also invested everything in high-risk products. Reality is more nuanced than that, but I guess it's enough to make his point.
Often 'his point' simply appears to be to rant about all traders (except himself) or all holders of an MBA (except for himself) or all people who have succeeded by chance (except, maybe, for himself?). Taleb tries really hard to sound like someone you wouldn't want to be around for too long. Not sure if that's actually true, or just a character he plays.
To finish positively, however, I like many of his conclusions. We might not be able to control and even understand randomness around us, but we are able to control our attitude, and just make the best out of every situation.
I have been following the FIRE movement online for a while now. FIRE stands for "Financial Independence; Retire Early" and is the concept of spending less than you earn, putting the difference in simple investment products until you reach a point in life where your expenses are completely covered by the income from your investments. As a rule of thumb, this amount is about 25 times the total number of your annual expenses. When you reach this point is a simple calculation based only on your savings rate: How many percent of your income are you able to stash away instead of spending. So if you save 16%, you can retire in 34 years. At a savings rate of 58%, the time shrinks to only 11 years.
Based on these concepts, the author and his girlfriend take us on their 1-year journey from learning about FIRE to completely changing their lifestyle. They reference many of the central figures in this movement, be it by personal conversation or a link to their blog or podcast.
I found this book very captivating. Most of the central concepts were not new to me, but following someone on their actual path felt very authentic.
I have learned even more that FIRE can take many forms. Yes, you can be frugal as hell and only eat rice and noodles, but there are a lot of alternative and effective ways of decreasing expenses. The central idea is often summed up as 'optimising for happiness' with the optimisation considering of short- and long-term effects. Overall, it also means a more sustainable and environment-friendly way of consuming resources.
Also, the term 'retirement' is clearly not meant in the traditional way of simply not working. Instead, it means the general independence of a paycheque-based employment, offering freedom to work on passion projects without financial worries, traveling or in general just doing what makes you happy.
Now, will I go FIRE? I don't know. Some of the steps, I am actually already doing 'right', but I am not on a full-steam path in any means. Most of the concepts are not binary though, and do not only have positive effects in the distant future. Instead, getting rid of debt and other liabilities in your life will lead to an immediate increase in personal independence and freedom.
The pure fact that working till you are in your 60s is not a given is deeply fascinating, I think.
The book is a prelude to a documentary that's coming out this year -- which I can't wait to watch.
An old couple leads a kind of miserable life and starts on a journey to find their long-lost son. It's England, a few hundred years back, and it's a kind of fantasy-ish version of England.
Well, what can I say. This was an odd read. I'm not quite sure what to make of it.
The writing was calm and slow, yet somehow with a depressing undertone. The dialogs sometimes intrigued me, sometimes annoyed me - there was a lot of back and forth. I did not understand all of the characters' development and changes.
The book left me with more questions than answers, yet somehow it felt I read something of value (sips at teacup). It made me think about peace and war, in personal manners and on the large scale. Are some things in life only good because conflicts have been forgotten or ignored? Should they be left forgotten? And more generally: Does this draw a parallel to our world? I don't know.
Spent a few weeks listening to the audio book. In one way to prepare for the upcoming season of the TV show, in the second way to finally continue with the original work. I had read book 1 and 4, but somehow left some gaps in between.
So, this was really good! Great characters, amazing dialog, well-crafted universe. Learned some new details here and there; the true and tragic story of Ser Jorah Mormont's lost love, just to name one.
Good to see that after years I can still get more and more invested in the story. To be honest though, I will probably never be able to remember the Targaryen family tree. Well, maybe after the next book.
Verdict: 37 hours well spent.
A very good book about sleep. I have learned some shocking facts (basically, not getting enough sleeps makes you stupid, sick and die earlier) and some encouraging facts. I am always a person seeking the short-term motivation in things, so I am taking from this book that I want to take better care of my sleep -- not for some vague advantage in the distant future, but for the fact that I am more physically fit and mentally capable when I've had enough sleep. I now know about REM vs NREM sleep, a huge amount of studies that Walker has cited and some practical tips on how to improve sleeping habits. Good night.
(Read as part of our company's book club.)
For months I have wanted to read this book and in January I finally got around to it. Hans Rosling and his co-authors present an intriguing guideline to form a fact-based worldview. In their book, they educate about the actual state the world is in -- and it's dramatically better than what most people think. In addition, they teach about the instincts we use to wrongly think about the world.
In a world where news, social media, others around us (myself included) talk about anecdotal evidence most of the time rather than always knowing the actual proportions of current problems, this book is an amazing guideline. It might become my new go-to reference that I think I will re-read every once in a while. I can whole heartedly recommend this book to everyone.
I do have one nit-pick, though: At one point, they report the fact that tigers, giant pandas and black rhinos are now not more endangered than they were in the 1990s. While this is an encouraging anecdote, here they make the same mistake they want to teach the reader not to make. Why pick 3 examples from the whole data, while the overall state of wild life seems to be getting worse and worse? According to a WWF report, for a lot of species, the populations have drastically decreased in the last 40 years. Maybe the book has already taught me how to questions these factoids before judging the whole, but they could have also picked a more representative data set, I think.
Nonetheless, wow, what a great view of the world. Realistic, yet optimistic (he calls himself a "possibilist", I like that).
Having seen some of Hans Rosling's talks online years ago, then learning about his death after that, and now seeing this book as a summary of his life's work really moved me. I think this is a must read.
Another one by Jonathan Safran Foer -- who writes in such a unique way, it is both a pleasure to read, but sometimes also challenging to stay fully engaged.
We follow two narrators, the young Ukrainian Alex, and our hero, the fictional (?) Jonathan Safran Foer himself, on a journey through Ukraine's countryside, trying to track down pieces from the past, from the 1940s, when terrible things happened here. Both their families somehow survived the war, and their paths seem very much entangled. The story is told by telling multiple stories at ones. From the early jewish Shtetl in the 18th century, over multiple generations of ancestors with their loves, affairs and other secrets.
The writing seems to follow a branched network of thoughts, a depth-first search through a mind map gathered over generations. Sometimes, it was hard to follow for me, but then we backtracked to a level where I could fully enjoy the story again.
Overall, I think this is another great book of his. Personally though, I would place it 3rd, after "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and "Eating Animals".
As far as I'm aware, this is supposed to be a classic in the field of financial education. I went into it quite sceptical because of the odd cover, and in many ways, you get what you expect: more "marketing" than deeply scientific content, very anecdotal rather than based on studies, a lot of redundancy in the text, which was a bit annoying sometimes. If I had to sum it up in one word, this book seemed very... "American" overall. And yet, it captivated me. The messages Robert Kiyosaki wants to drive home really get you thinking about your own relationship towards money, personal assets and towards work itself. I wouldn't take everything from this book literally, but I think the way he presents the "personal income statement" and its cashflow helped me get a better grasp and what are "good" and "bad" spending habits. I'd say it is a called a classic for a reason.
I knew the story, yet had never read the original. A clearly written text and great read.
I was surprised to find myself laughing from time to time -- at the cat who doesn't seem to grasp what's going on but actually doesn't really care; or at the pigs when they discover alcohol.
In my reading, I am always interested in "the construction of evil" or what you want to call it. Orwell apparently follows history by taking inspiration from the Russian Revolution. The plot is believable in some aspects, however it relies on the population of the farm not being smart enough to understand what's going on, while it's pretty clear for the reader right from the start. What interests me also, are other ideas of more subtle ways of turning evil. Animal Farm tells a different story though, and that's okay.
After a couple of non-fiction books, I wanted to just grab a light read. Read this in a stressful time, so I didn't fully devote my attention to the story, which is why it didn't capture me completely and confused me sometimes. I laughed in parts, but yeah, can't really rate this properly, because I didn't pay attention all the time. I think this is a good story though, definitely had some captivating characters.
The story of a former Apple engineer who was part of the team working on the software for the original iPhone -- hence "the golden age of Steve Jobs" as the subtitle of this book (sounds like he's only ever met Jobs 2 or 3 times though).
Interesting details in parts. A little surprising but also calming to read that some/most of hist struggles during work seem familiar from a daily coding experience.
In the book, he tries to sum up the core of what he thinks makes the creative process at Apple be what it is. Interesting to read in parts, but he clearly "only" had the inside view from one engineering team. The overarching meta view including management, marketing, etc is lacking. Still, some insightful anecdotes even though the process he distills in the end isn't completely convincing to me.
One thing that bugs me is the continuous stressing of how much Apple makes decisions driven by "Taste", rather than data-driven (he's throwing out punches at Google all the time). Right in the next paragraph, he tells the story of how ingeniously clever they derived the "perfect" size of an icon on the home screen. Surprise: They do it data-driven by running experiments with a simple app. Inconsistencies like this make the whole argument stumble here and there. Still, an interesting and quick read.
Good book as a general overview of how to sort out your finances, no matter if you just want to be prepared for retirement in your 60s, or move up that date of not-having-to-work to some time earlier than that.
Basically, JL Collins just says:
Things that were not "perfect":
Why I think this was great:
If you don't want to read the book, you can find a lot of overlap in his free blog series: https://jlcollinsnh.com/stock-series/ -- OR, for an overview, simply watch this talk that he gave when invited to speak at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71ibcZAX3I