Only one out of six people I've talked to says that they've read more in 2020 than before. I've read far less than in the previous couple of years, yet managed to stay over one book a month.
Tally: six audiobooks, two hard copies, and ten e-books. In no particular order:
Tally: six audiobooks, two hard copies, and ten e-books. In no particular order:
1 + 1 = 3, and Predatory Thinking
Two collections of short essays on lateral thinking put together in Trott's style. He writes with a simple and effective formula of opening with an example, describing the problem, adding a twist, and bringing it home to a one-sentence lesson in creativity.
He wanted something that was unheard of for poor people. Holidays... But this would never get through the House of Commons. Most of the MPs, particularly the Conservatives, were landowners and industrialists...
So John Lubbock presented his bill as The Bank Holidays Act 1871. It went through Parliament pretty much on the nod.
So John Lubbock presented his bill as The Bank Holidays Act 1871. It went through Parliament pretty much on the nod.
Without a mind to envision a ship, to build a ship, to use it as a ship, there isn't a ship. It needed a mind to think up the concept of a ship. Then the mind shaped matter to fit the concept. And then the 'ship' existed. And that's what creativity is.
Marketing Made Simple
I'm a fan of Don Miller's Storybrand, both book and podcast, and Marketing Made Simple is written in the same style. It lays out a step-by-step formula for building marketing funnels. Pretty straightforward for most businesses to apply, lives up to the title.
Scanning our environment is like sorting through a stack of mail. We place anything we see as junk, or not relevant to our survival, in the recycle bin. Bills, letters from friends, catalogs we might be interested in, and such go into a pile to be sorted later.
At the curiosity stage we are really only making two large piles: keep and discard.
At the curiosity stage we are really only making two large piles: keep and discard.
Writing Without Bullshit
On why poor writing abounds, and how to begin dealing with it yourself. In a nutshell: Write short, put the best stuff up front, eliminate the wimpy words, and use pronouns to speak directly to the reader.
Instead of a quote, here are my notes from the book.
Instead of a quote, here are my notes from the book.
Norse Mythology
I've never delved deeper into Norse mythology beyond Age of Mythology, and as it's something I'd like my kid to learn about, Neil Gaiman seemed to be a good intro. Narrated by himself on Audible, a great retelling of the myths that will be on hold for a while due to some brutal depictions.
One drink from the water of your well uncle Mimir, said Odin. That is all I ask for. Mimir shook his head. Nobody drank from the well but Mimir himself. He said nothing. Seldom did those who are silent make mistakes.
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
This is how you should write about history. I've never felt so interested in chemistry and nuclear physics as while listening to this audiobook—and I kept thinking that it would inspire a great many kids to consider natural sciences. Masterfully connected threads of culture, politics, and lives that led to the genesis of the most destructive weapon ever wielded.
Early in 1939, and early 1940, the nuclear arms race began. Responsible men, who properly and understandably feared a dangerous enemy, saw their own ideas reflected back to them malevolently distorted. Ideas that appear defensive in friendly hands, seen the other way around appeared aggressive. But they were the same ideas.
Obviously Awesome
Everything related to positioning, distilled in one book. Delivered through a framework, with an emphasis on understanding and leveraging the context in which a product or company is positioned.
Many companies have weak positioning precisely because they don't clearly understand their true competitive alternatives in the minds of customers. Understand what a customer might replace you with in order to understand how they categorize your solution.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The title says it all, another book that should be in the hands of every teen, a far superior way of making natural sciences compelling to kids than anything to be found in school curricula.
Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Even if a third of this book was historically accurate, it would make the Mongols the most underrated civilization in the history of mankind.
In probably the first law of its kind anywhere in the world, Genghis Khan decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone.
How to Write Short
You may not learn how to write short, but the book will help you learn how to edit yours and the writing of another.
Here is a list of the usual suspects [to cut]:
adverbs
adjectives
strings of prepositional phrases
intensifiers
qualifiers
jargon
latinate flab
adverbs
adjectives
strings of prepositional phrases
intensifiers
qualifiers
jargon
latinate flab
The list had me cut sixteen of the usual suspects from this page alone.
Can't Hurt Me
It's a self-help book, but from a mad beast that was supposed to fail at every other corner he took. Leaves you with virtually no excuses.
“We all need small sparks, small accomplishments in our lives to fuel the big ones. Think of your small accomplishments as kindling. When you want a bonfire, you don’t start by lighting a big log. You collect some witch’s hair—a small pile of hay or some dry, dead grass. You light that, and then add small sticks and bigger sticks before you feed your tree stump into the blaze.
Because it’s the small sparks, which start small fires, that eventually build enough heat to burn the whole fucking forest down.”
Because it’s the small sparks, which start small fires, that eventually build enough heat to burn the whole fucking forest down.”
Writing to Learn
David Perell was the first I heard it from, and then I also began noticing the thread with other writers—writing about a subject makes you learn more about it than any other kind of passive education.
The fear of writing is planted in countless people at an early age—often, ironically, by English teachers... Much of this fear could be eased if writing became a component of how these subjects are taught.
A science-minded student, if he were encouraged to write about a scientific or technological subject, would soon find that he could do it.
A science-minded student, if he were encouraged to write about a scientific or technological subject, would soon find that he could do it.
How to Be a Conservative
You know you've come across a master when you strongly disagree with what they've written, and yet you enjoy the argumentation they've laid before you. As a friend commented after we discussed his passing, his was a ghastly corpus of knowledge. I feel as a conservative with hard liberal values, an amalgam that is difficult to explain and requires a loaded pen spilling over a roll of paper.
Only if people are held together by stronger bonds that the bonds of free choice can free choice be raised to the prominence that the new political order promised.
The Madness of Crowds
I'm on the fence with this book and will have to get a hardcopy, as audiobooks don't allow for much thinking through. Definitely a needed counter perspective to the explosion of cancel culture and the rampant identity politics.
The Psychology of Money
You've got me when you break through the useless notion of irrationality, and actually try to explain why we don't understand that another's behavior is actually perfectly rational—to them. Hearing Housel talk about that on a podcast got me to get the book. In turn, reading it made me sweat several times, as I find myself in my early thirties lacking some fundamental financial acumen.
It is one thing to say, "We don't know what the future holds." It's another to admit that you, yourself, don't know today what you will even want in the future.
The Art of Game Design
I've gotten into the business of gaming this year and recognizing patterns from behavioral economics within great games brought the book in front of me. Meant for game designers, but as anything that aims to create an experience and influence the behavior of others, it's all about the lenses through which you see others. A textbook on game design.
The game is not the experience. The game enables the experience, but it is not the experience... As designers, we don't really care about the tree and how it falls—we care only about the experience of hearing it.
Arts and Minds
A brilliant history of the Royal Society of Arts, from its founding, inner turmoils, to the effects it had on the society of Great Britain. Plenty of lessons on leveraging individual interests for the public good.
Yet serving the public by subscribing to the fund would not entirely be an act of selflessness. His plan was not contradictory after all. Shipley recognised that in demonstrating some self-sacrifice there was honour and social standing to be had.
Letters of Note
Queen Elizabeth II sending the recipe for her drop scones to Eisenhower, a former slave's letter to his former master, Feynman's letter to his dead wife, fourteen-year-old Castro asking Roosevelt for $10, FBI's death threat to MLK, Da Vinci's cover letter, and other fascinating writings from both the famous and the anonymous.
How many imaginations, lived through by me, created by me anew, will perish, will be extinguished in my brain or will be spilt as poison in my blood!
Dostoyevski to his brother, after he was pardoned just as the firing squad was about to fire at him and his friends.
The Peregrine
Remains for me to finish in 2021, an account of the life of a peregrine and its habitat. What makes it fascinating is the masterful use of adjectives and brilliant descriptions of a bird that Baker stalked for a year.
Hood the glare of the eyes, hide the white tremor of the hands, shade the stark reflecting face, assume the stillness of a tree... To share fear is the greatest bond of all. The hunter must become the thing he hunts.