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With the Olympics in South Korea this year, and us visiting southeast Asia, I wanted to learn more about the history of North Korea and it's people. I've heard the horror stories in the news over the last decade of labor camps, extreme hunger and the systematic approach to lying to the people, but this book goes deeper than that - by focusing on actual stories from North Korean defectors.
Some of the stories they tell are warm, like when talking about family and young love. Most are haunting, talking about the physical effects of extreme hunger or carts of corpses being removed from trains that died of hunger the previous night.
The escape process and the integration back into South Korean life is not easy either, and both have their own drawbacks which are explored in this book.
Having re-watched the movie many times, I thought it was finally time to give the book a shot. It matches up surprisingly well with the movie, with smart cuts from the book - I was actually impressed by that. The book goes more into Elles family life, which has a different dynamic than the movie.
The part I enjoyed the most in the book were the discussions between Elle and religious leaders. The book went much more into these discussions than in the book. Probably my favorite quotes from the book was by Elle when discussing world overpopulation: “A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.”
Overall some definite differences between the book and the movie, but not so much that you're going to be surprised by what's happening.
Having seen every Star Trek episode and being a huge fan of Galaxy Quest, this one was amazing. The story revolves around a space ship (like the Enterprise) where a surprising number of crew members are dying on away missions – especially those lower on the totem pole. Once the bit characters begin to realize this trend they divise ways to take advantage of the situation.
Much of what made this great was how meta it was. Almost like a darker version of Glaxy Quest.
I'd heard the Sci-Fi channel was in the process of making this book into a mini-series and decided to give it a shot. Being an inspiration for Halo also tipped my interest. This one follows the idea of a Dyson Ring, which has always been an intriguing topic to me. The idea that one Dyson Ring could have the habitable area of 3 million earth-size planets is mind-blowing. The world was more interesting than the characters, unfortunately. There is some controversy about the minimized role of women in this book, which I'd also agree with.
After seeing Vengeful win Goodreads best of list for 2018, and I wanted to check out V.E's latest series - and after a strong first book I continued to #2. I have mixed thoughts on this one though. I love the world, I love the two main characters and I love their rivalry. Unfortunately, those parts of the story were minor details in a larger battle between the cast. I could've used more exploration into the world as a whole.
With the new SyFy Magicians series airing, and a number of people recommending this series, I decided to give it a shot. While expecting a more campy Harry Potter adaptation, what I got was a present day magical tale – a combination of HP, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Apocalypse Now. In a book that could've gone very campy, it managed to stay serious. I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes next.
I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of Shadow, only to be confused by the direction later on. The story itself and the characters were interesting – meandering without a focus as Severian wanders.
Lately I've been reading a lot about buying real estate to rent out. This book provided a solid base to scare me into reality on what that would involve. The concept of being a landlord seems like a good idea when everything is working well. If you get the finances right, the tenant isn't too pushy, the property doesn't have too many issues – well then you can probably enjoy the additional cashflow and appreciation on the property. If not, well it might be more similar to my past landlording experience where the tenant stopped paying, had a friend of his move in, had to be evicted with police. Hopefully that means I've at least seen (some of) the bad side to know what to expect.
This is one of the best programming books I've ever read at a conceptual and functional level. It guides the learner through basic D3 all the way up to where you feel powerful with the framework. King does a great job of introducing concepts as needed in an intentional way – something I appreciate greatly when trying to learn a complicated new topic. If you're going to read one book on D3, this should be it.
While reading Elon Musk's biography, he touches quite a bit on his time at Paypal, including working with Peter Thiel. When I realized Thiel also had a biography out, I knew it would be next.
This book leads with a question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”. When I heard this, I had to pause the audiobook and think this one through. Before I knew it, I'd been stewing on this question for over an hour!
The next biggest takeaway was the idea that the next “big thing” won't be a tweak on existing piece of software, but a completely new market. Bill Gates won the operating system money. Google the Search Engine market. Facebook the social network. It's better to dive into a new category than try to copy an existing one.
I hadn't heard of Sharp Objects before the Golden Globe Awards this year. I was intrigued by the cast and decided to check it out - and I'm glad I did. The story follows a reporter on her journey back to her hometown to investigate missing girls. The story is a complete whirlwind that builds in ways I wasn't expecting, but upon reflection just made sense. I appreciate how well everything ties together.
The Martian started as a self published book on Amazon before eventually being picked up by a publisher, and now has a movie in the works with Matt Damon scheduled for late 2015. The easiest way to describe it is Castaway meets Apollo 13. It was a gripping story with enough realism to keep things interesting.
Fight Club is my favorite movie. The book was all over the place — like the movie. Somehow the format fit the screen better for me.
After weeks (months?) of hearing me mention how great the “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” was, Marilyn decided to pick this book up on a recent trip. It wasn't long before she devoured it and started quoting phrases like “if it's elastic, it feels fantastic” and the need to be able to fit a bottle of wine in your purse. Filled with great quips, it's hard not to laugh during this one.
All creators want to see their finished products get broad attention. This book investigates that illusive point where things fall in line, momentum begins to build and success is inevitable. Like with other Gladwell books, The Tipping Point is peppered with stories that seem unrelated at first, but are always brought back to the central theme (something I wish I was as good at). It's an entertaining book, and an informative book, but I felt it was missing a way to FIND a tipping point.
At my work (Pluralsight / Code School), I noticed this book was on the list of recommended reading for leadership. After reading it, I realized just how many of the core concepts of this book have found their way into our culture and behavior here. Some of the top takeaways to me that this one recommends include: know why your organization exists, have monthly 1-on-1's with everyone on your team or your top people will leave, have a solid leadership team, inspire vulnerability based trust, understand core values, have productive and targeted meetings.
The definition of “stoic” and the pursuit of stoicism aren't something I was able to differentiate before reading this book. After, though, I realized how much close to home the concepts of stoicism are to strive to behave. It's not often that I encounter a philosophy, or a belief that rings so completely true with my core self.
There were a few concepts that were the most poignant to me. Having a “philosophy of life” is an interesting idea – a way of living. “Negative visualization”- spending time thinking about what could go wrong to appreciate what you have, and be less affected when things don't go your way. The idea of “control” over - things you have complete control (yourself), limited control how over, or no control over – and spending time on those you have complete control over. Asking if you're guided by own values, or following others. There were a few things I disagreed with, but those were usually authors interpretations of the original works, which I more agreed with.
Having used the online alias Dyogenez for 20 years, and having read everything by Diogenes before this, it was amazing to hear such a deep dive into the cynics way of life - and how similar it is to Stoicism.
Focusing more on getting back to our roots on asking questions than about a specific question, “A More Beautiful Question” focuses around how to return to place where we question the world around us. From an early age we're asking questions about everything around us, but somehow we stop doing that. I enjoyed the very “growth mindset” approach to questioning, but many of the examples given were more focused around innovating and entrepreneurship than more practical examples.
Short story taking place in the cadet training area over Christmas. The idea fits in with the rest of the world – removing all religious practices from the students there – but still did not draw me in enough to appreciate the characters.
Being an amazing writer on religion led me to reading everything Dawkins has written. This biography details his life and inspiration that drove him towards a life in science. Interesting subject, but reading about years in boarding school and all about academia wasn't that interesting to me. His background in coding was the most interesting part, but covered quickly.
I can only hear about a book so long before eventually reading it. Although 1984 is known for it's totalitarian state where everything is watched by the government, what interested me most were the ideas around war involved in the book. The perpetual war idea hits closer to home now than anytime in our countries history – with the Afghan war hitting 12 years.
Presenting has always been something I've struggled with. If I'm well prepared and know my stuff, then I'm not at all scared - but when I don't invest the time it shows. Talk like Ted dives deeper into the core of the presentation - focusing on adding pathos, logos and ethos to your talks. I like the idea of sharing memorable experiences and novel statistics as a way to stand out as well.
Having recently moved from a developer position to a product manager position this book gave some immediate suggestions on how to lead a team to create a new product or feature from scratch. Having been used on a number of products at Google including Gmail, it's great to know that it's working already.
What was most useful for me was seeing the breakdown of what was done each day of the 5 day product sprint – as well as what each person in the sprint would do. Some of the recommendations were key - like the need for a decision maker to be a part of the process to ensure that takeaways from the sprint are actionable. I look forward to trying out some of these concepts eventually!
I've always been fascinated by the idea of “flow”. The ability to dig deep into a topic and concentrate on it for long periods of time takes some time to nurture and practice to get good at - and when I stop practicing it gets more difficult. The focus on deep work and the advantages it can bring in this book range from learning, to execution to producing the best work you're capable of.