By Ayn Rand This one was grueling, even listening to the audiobook at double speed. It is SO LONG. It feels even longer. The same verbose interactions happen over and over. The plot and Rand’s message don’t need endless words, but they’re there anyway. It comes across as the immature ramblings of a person who […]

By Ramit Sethi Like my recent read of The Simple Path to Wealth, I was interested in personal finance advice. Again, there was nothing revolutionary. Some of the fine details are different in this one compared the to previous book, but they mostly agree with each other and with what I’ve already been doing. It

By George Orwell Like The Giver, this is one that many other people covered during their schooling, but somehow I missed it. I’m familiar with references to it, and I was aware that “some animals are more equal than others” but I finally consumed the book. It was a quick listen on audio book that

By Russ Harris I liked the premise. I agree that I struggle with acceptance and that causes more pain. At the beginning of the book while that was being described, I found myself appreciating the text. Defusion and expansion guidance seemed helpful. I enjoyed the book less as it went on. I didn’t care for

By Lois Lowry I’ve been hearing about this book since I was in elementary school. Somehow nearly everyone around me read it, but I never did. It was never required reading for me. Now that I’ve gotten in the habit of using Libby aggressively and really leaning into audiobooks, I decided that I should fill

By Don Miguel Ruiz The four agreements are: Those are all good enough. I have no objections to those agreements. The rest of the text around it didn’t add anything for me. Talk of “black magic”, societal expectations as a parasite, and the notion of 2 year olds as the ideal, free people didn’t sit

By JK Rowling He terminado recién el siguiente libro de la serie Harry Potter.Disfruto leer las historias, aunque hay algunas palabras que no entiendo todavía.Deseo que fuera más fácil buscar palabras en el diccionario cuando estoy leyendo, pero no me gusta interrumpir el libro. resumen breve: Harry regresa a Hogwarts para su segundo año, a

By J.L. Collins This wasn’t very long or intense. I think I listened to the whole thing in one or two days. There was nothing mind blowing in it (which of course fits with the “simple” concept). I appreciated hearing some rationale for basic financial moves and getting confirmation that I’m not missing the mark

By Helen Lewis I listened to this one on a whim. I think it was suggested to me somewhere and it sounded interesting. I enjoyed it. Essentially, “genius” is a cultural creation. Earlier societies (ancient Greeks/Romans) didn’t apply the distinction to people, but rather acts or creations of people. One would be visited by genius,

By Kurt Vonnegut I actually re-read this in July. I neglected to post about it. The current noise about AI taking over made me want to revisit it. It was published in 1952 but feels remarkably relevant now. In his bleak future world, machines have taken over most of the work. There are now a

by Keith J. Hayward This book was ok. I think there are valid concerns within it. Still, Hayward came across as a bit of a joyless curmudgeon. It felt like every simple joy was shameful and bad for not being adult enough. Further, it felt light on data. Cherry-picked extreme examples were used to represent

By Marcus Aurelius I wanted/expected to like this more than I did. That’s not to say that it was a bad thing to read, but other Stoicism resources were better. One thing that I did take away from it was the value of journaling. Perhaps more value than taking any thoughts away from Marcus Aurelius,

By J.K. Rowling Esta es la segunda novela que he leído en español.Todavía hay palabras y frases que no entiendo, pero creo que entiendo la mayoría del libro.No usé un diccionario mientras leía, pero a veces después.Es una manera divertida de practicar español.Voy a leer los próximos libros de la serie pronto.

By Ray Dalio I was introduced to the book years ago at a previous job. My manager would read random principles to the office. It seemed like bloated fluff then and I didn’t think much of Dalio’s advice. Still, the book showed up on many lists from other leaders about top leadership references. I figured

By Cory Doctorow Summary of Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification Thesis Doctorow argues that dominant digital platforms inevitably decay—not because they were badly designed, but because the incentives of monopoly capitalism push platforms to progressively degrade the user experience. He calls this process enshittification: “First they’re good to users; then they abuse users to benefit business customers;

This is what ChatGPT says about it:AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can’t Do (Yet) — a book and ongoing project by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor — is a critical look at the real versus exaggerated capabilities of AI systems, especially those marketed as transformative or “intelligent.” Here are the key points and core

By Robert Cialdini This book covered familiar ground. It was similar to Predictably Irrational or Thinking Fast and Slow. There are a lot of different frames and setups that influence decision making, even when the decision maker perceives that they are making a rational decision. It’s helpful to be reminded of them to keep them

by Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, Kerry Patterson This is not a long book and it doesn’t include any crazy new ideas. However, it is a critical reminder of places where conversations go wrong. I found the examples of poorly handled crucial conversations to be very familiar. I’ve been in them and I’ve handled

By Celia C. Pérez I read this from front to back without any dictionary assistance. There are still some words and phrases that I miss, but overall, I was able to follow the story and I could infer some new words and phrases from the context. It was a fun read and I’m looking forward

By Robert Putnam Like Sapolsky’s books, I read Putnam’s work backwards. I read the recent, more complete representations of their ideas in Determined and The Upswing before back tracking to Behave and Bowling Alone. Bowling Alone was entirely about social capital and civic participation without tying more measures of societal wellness into it like The