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The 4th book in Asimovs Robot series. Somewhat awkward in it's sexuality, but a decent detective tale on its own. Less technical than the other books in the robot series.
Reading this reminded me of The Daily WTF where a weird problem is presented, and eventually solved. That's much of the format of this series of short stories. The book is a combination of various parts of these 9 stores, which are considered the beginning of Asimovs Robot/Empire/Foundation series.
Mailchimp does some amazing things. This book has UX in the title, but uses it as a jumping off point for all parts of their process. A number of chapters towards the beginning talking about the discovery process were interesting, but when it got to code it went a bit specific for me to get too much from.
This one felt more like an introduction to D3 and an introduction to Angular. Both were great in isolation, but how to use D3 within Angular wasn't as heavily discussed as I would have liked.
There's a lot to this one. Education is broken, and this book looks into one reason why. The premise? There is a “classic theory of learning” that we all grew up with and a historical theory.
We're all familiar with the classic theory. You go to class with others of your age, your teacher goes over a set curriculum, you take a test on the subjects and are left feeling great or like you failed. Repeat this process to “learn”.
This process hasn't been around that long. Look back 200 years ago and people learned completely differently. It seemed to work well, as it led to enlightened artists and ancient philosophers. This book looks into what led to this change in education, and what we can do to get back to the old ways.
Many of the concepts of the old ways connected with me. Leaning towards hands on learning, favoring fun and mentor ship over assessments, mixing up groups to include people of different skill levels and more. It left me wanting to figure out what a curriculum would look like and just how much fun it would be to learn with an excited group of learners in this way.
This was written in 1953, but feels like it could have been written this year – which shows how timeless Clarkes style of science fiction is. The story is familiar if you've watched the movie Independence Day. But what happens if the aliens seem inteligent and malevolent? How long does it take for humans to accept aliens? This relatively short novel was beat out for Retro Hugo Award by Fahrenheit 451.
If you watched Aziz Ansari's recent Netflix show, Master of None, then the content of this book might sound appealing. Unfortunately it is more of a clinical depiction of some of the great comedy from the series. The book itself focuses on the different ways people connect today, and how that's different than it was 50 years ago. What was the most interesting to me was how people connect around the world – in France, Japan and South America.
What is it that makes companies go off track? Max breaks down a few ways that this can happen and potential routes to getting back on track. At the end of each chapter is a list of questions to reflect on what was just read and how the reader could use it in their own life.
Fun, fast paced and very similar to Ready Player One in some ways, Armada is a cross between The Last Starfighter, Independence Day and, well Ready Player One. Not as great as Cline's first, but a solid follow up.
It's been a while since I took a good look inward at my social media habits. This book forced me to do that - and I didn't like what I saw.
To list out what Cal mentions about social media addiction is basically just looking in the mirror for me and many people. We pick our phones to fill time, creating a loop of services that provide us with variable rewards that keep us coming back for more.
He's careful to say that social media (or any service that we mindlessly consume) isn't bad, but our relationship with it can be unhealthy.
One thing that stuck with me was the idea that all that time spent makes it feel like we're connected to people, but in reality we aren't. It's time away from building real friendships and growing real relationships.
After reading this I immediately decided to do my own 30-day digital declutter. 4 days in now and I've already stopped checking my phone constantly - although that's mostly because every app is organized and I've written Goodreads reviews for everything I've read. Looking forward to seeing where this goes next.
I feel like I know almost nothing more about Tim Cook after reading this – other than his role at Apple after Jobs passed away.
It's rare to read a story with so many shades of grey. The main characters of Vicious – Victor and Eli – are far from typical protagonists. They are both friends and college roommates who discover a way to become EOs - Extra Ordinary people. Think superheroes.
Rather than being a typical superhero story where the focus is on these two interacting with the world, the story draws these to together as conflict builds.
As the first book in a series, this was a near-perfect introduction to the world. It can be read on its own, or as part of the series. I'll be continuing it without a doubt.
This collection of affirmations, initially written as Tweets, is an inspiring but quick read. It helps that I can imagine Lin Manuel Miranadas voice saying each and every one of them.
If you told me I'd be on the edge of my seat for a 36 hour audiobook about Alexander Hamilton I'd likely give you a bit of side eye. As a huge Hamilton (The Musical) fan, this helped fill in the gaps to further understand the context for things in the show. It also astonished me just how accurate the musical is overall. After seeing Hamilton demonized in various other stories, it was refreshing to see a person who accomplished so much, and just didn't stop.
This isn't a finance book or a memoir. Having read Tanja's blog for the last few years, I couldn't wait to see what she'd focus on. The result? A guidebook for how to retire early by following your own path. This one challenges you with questions, activities and thought provoking questions that help determine what could be your idealistic future. Much of the financial side may be old-hat if you read blogs or books in the FIRE community, but it's sprinkled with facts and data to help highlight the pitfalls common to lifestyle change. As someone who recently left their job, much of the vision casting and future focused questions were useful for reflecting on what I really want to do next, while getting another persons take on their first year after working.
I actually preferred the first book in the Wheel of Time series over this one, and neither were that great to me. It seemed like after the adventures in the first one, the characters started over in this book (I see why it was suggested I skip #1). The story had a few interesting parts – the alternate lines for instance – but was a small reference in a larger story of mostly waiting around and moving places.
While Daring Greatly focuses on vulnerability, Rising Strong takes a look at this too, but adds on compassion, curiosity, love, generosity and more as a route to happiness and integrity. A few months out I can't say I remember much about this book verbatim, but my Myers Briggs did change from “Thinking” to “Feeling”, so I think it had a bigger impact than I can put into words.
With this being the 5th book in the Mistborn universe, and 2nd in the Wax and Wayne series, I wasn't expecting too much. Alloy of Law didn't hook me in anywhere near as much as Sandersons other works. Although it set the stage in a new time, it didn't evolve the world as much as I'd hoped. Shadows of Self, on the other hand, conjured some new ideas into the world and brought more light to the condra who I always was interested in hearing more from.
There's a lot to this one. Side hustles, the math behind financial independence and life-strategies on how to fit money into your life. One side that stood out to me was the side hustle side - something I've historically been pretty awful at. I think some of the strategies here rank money over time - a rough balance to get right.
I've been interested in managing other developers for a while and read quite a few books trying to continually get better at it (still learning!). This one offered quite a few new takes on this topic. The format of the book includes interviews with tech leads in various states of their career, with similar questions asked to each. Some had better takeaways than others, but the collective similarities also highlighted things I need to work more on.
At only 3 hours, this is a short introduction to Zen in the form of a collection of talks.
If there was a book about stereotypes for how the brain works this would be it. In most cases though, the stereotypes are true unless you're actively aware of the decisions you're making. This book elaborates on the decisions we make without knowing it. For most of them I was nodding along thinking “yeah, that's true, I knew that was a bias I held”, which left it mostly skin deep for me.
After reading The Three Body Problem, I was split. On the one hand, the story had some amazing, innovate takes on science fiction – but on the other I didn't identify with any of the characters. The Dark Forest elevates the sci-fi even more while creating flawed but interesting characters I wanted to see what happened to. The concept of the “Wall Climbers” and the “Wall Breakers” was a welcomed addition – and allowed for a hidden motive to an otherwise linear story. When I think about the wide variety of topics covered, this book has parts that are Battlestar Galactica, Foundation, Caves of Steel, Rendezvous with Rama, Dan Simmons and more.
Both biography of Salman Khan, and the start of Khan Academy, and a look at Khan's ideal world for education. If you're curious about changing education, with the help of technology, this is a definite must read. Even though the education target is different from something like Code School, many of the ideas work in both settings.