Barry

Started out promising but I lost interest halfway through as the search for the 7 shards was so dull. I read the Wikipedia synopsis of the last half of the book and I don't regret my decision, a disappointing sequel.

Didn't finished, stopped 30% in.

The book is written with the arrogant tone of a man that believes he's figured out the US media system, exploited it, and wants to bask in tales of his success. If you can get past the egotistical tone and the right-leaning one-sidedness of this book, Breitbart's perspective on how the media works is tremendously insightful, at times frightening, as he utilized a number of morally reprehensible, manipulative tactics.

Stand out chapters for me: Chapter 5 on the Bush era, and chapter 6 on Marxism and Alinsky's 13 rules for radicals.

Overall the book does a great job of explaining the tactics that the far-right media (and to some extent Trump) are currently employing.

Here are a few of the things make this book so special:

1. Alex Ferguson is the best football manager of all time with an astonishing level of success, worked to it from the bottom-up, and he's from a working class background.
2. He got there by building his team and culture around long-term thinking and decision making, which is rare in modern football. He describes how this long-term mindset applies to hiring, scouting, decision making, culture, etc.
3. His focus on hiring and youth development is incredible, with multiple chapters describing how he built one of the best teams in the world, and a lasting culture of dedication and excellence.
4. He isn't afraid to call people out directly, and describe their successes or failings. I don't feel like he held anything back in this book, putting it all out on the table, right down to how his family and marriage worked around his strenuous job.
5. At this point in his life (post-retirement), he has strong perspectives on business, finance, and politics and how those systems work. Some of these from his sons, who have also grown up and given him their perspectives on business and finance, and some from teaching leadership at Harvard.
6. This book is written with a slight slant towards usefulness for start-ups and businesses, occasionally making comparisons between football management and business management. He offers anecdotes from discussions with politicians such as the Prime Minister.

Disclaimer: I'm am biased towards this book in a couple of ways: 1) I'm Scottish, 2) I admire Man U as a football team and culture.

Stopped at 40%

Nice book. I can see it being great to come back and flip through periodically.

Would have liked more quotes from Bourdain himself. The 2 in the intro and outro were the best in the book.

Some solid quotes in there though: Questlove, Obama, Serj Tankian.

Good representation of pictures from some of the best episodes of Parts Unknown.

The Black Swan is a book about prediction. It describes our many challenges and failings making predictions. It's probability and economics heavy, with examples often focusing on socioeconomic factors.

Surprisingly to me, the 2009 financial crash and global COVID-19 pandemic are NOT categorized as black swans—they're gray swans—as the occurrence of them was very predictable (just not the exact timing, scale, or specifics). Black Swans are unknown unknowns; unforeseen positive or negative events that create huge effects, that typically sit outside of the expectations of common predictions (as there was no reasonable way to predict them).

There were so many highlights for me it's hard to pick any key bits out, the entire book was fantastic, even the big essay at the end of the second edition of the book that I read.

Taleb is fantastic at explaining his theories, using multiple examples to illustrate each one. I felt like this rounded out my understanding of each of the theories. Fair warning: he can be quite egotistical and rude at times.

I love any books that illustrate different world-views, and The Black Swan was fantastic for that, hence 5 stars. I highlighted a lot, and expect to re-read after reading his other books.

P.S. As a software engineer, I also found the book very applicable to estimating complex software projects.

Amazing book. The author has such a strong understanding of political, religious, social and emotional systems, combining them all to give context on how the world has reached it's current state.

Struggled with interest in part 1, but parts 2 and 3 build up to an incredible part 4 on the scientific revolution with particularly awesome chapters on capitalism, and happiness (separate topics :)).

Enjoyed the very occasional hints of humor, too.

I've referenced this time after time over the past few years for common sense guidance on baby/toddler issues—it's always been solid. Tribeca Pediatrics have been great, too.

Big fan of this book.

It's about how to enable huge, complex teams to be adaptable at scale.

It deep dives into 2 main strategies:

1. Creating shared consciousnesses so that folks at the front lines have a very high level of information and context.
2. Delegating decision making so that senior leadership don't bottleneck, increasing speed, adaptability, and empowerment.

Lots of fantastic, well placed anecdotes from: the fight in Iraq, US companies, NASA, historical books, and the author's personal life.

It takes a bit to get going but warms up by chapter 6 on org structures, which is fantastic. Loved chapter 8 on the O&I meeting structure, and chapter 11 on a leader's role on a team of teams.

It's not immediately drag-and-drop applicable to software teams, but that's also what's so good about this book, as the tactics from a different context (the war against Al Qaeda) spur thought on what methods you could apply to software teams and how you might adapt them. The strategies are generalized enough to last for decades.

I would give 4.5 stars. Going to round up as this is just so well written, with such interesting, practical examples. The best book on empowerment at scale that I've read yet.

I enjoyed all of the novellas in this collection, but Stories of Your Life and Towers of Babylon are exceptional. Both spellbinding must reads.

I wish there were more Ted Chiang stories to read! The creativity, variety and quality of his work is really inspiring.

Wonderful little book. Lots of ideas for spreading happiness and strengthening loving relationships.

Loved this. Didn't want it to end. As a hardcore player of Doom and every Quake game, this was right up my nostalgia alley.

I enjoyed the perspective the book gave on founder/team dynamics and the company politics that were going on behind the scenes for each of the games. A ton of drama, and a surprisingly poignant progression as (mild spoiler here...) the team continually reached for and failed to find that euphoric state of team dynamic and flow that they had during Doom development.

Not quite 5 stars, as it could have gone deeper, especially with Carmack. Carmack's work is just so damn impressive—could read about it all day. What an absolute force.

3.5.

1st half was a great adventure, loved it.

2nd half was just ok, the love story parts weren't that great.

The Dave Eggers interview was great, rest were ok.

Stopped reading after the first third of the book. Couldn't get into it.

The Maus books really blew me away. Authentic, touching, and absorbing from beginning to end.

Two streams alternate back-and-forth throughout: Art's discussions in NYC with his increasingly demanding, quirky, aging father who's problems Art struggles to accept, and tales from his father's time enduring Nazi occupation in Poland and Germany.

Both streams are completely engrossing. The pacing and interplay are wonderful. Art and his father were both relatable, with their flaws and challenges laid remarkably bare and honestly explored.

The Maus books really blew me away. Authentic, touching, and absorbing from beginning to end.

Two streams alternate back-and-forth throughout: Art's discussions in NYC with his increasingly demanding, quirky, aging father who's problems Art struggles to accept, and tales from his father's time enduring Nazi occupation in Poland and Germany.

Both streams are completely engrossing. The pacing and interplay are wonderful. Art and his father were both relatable, with their flaws and challenges laid remarkably bare and honestly explored.

This audiobook was way better than I expected for a 3 hour length. Focused, concise, and powerful.

TL;DR: Over time you've built up habits of being irritated or frustrated by certain triggers. Some of these are minor irritations, some are bigger and may be negatively affecting your own mental peace and relationships with loved ones. This book helps you to observe and question how you react to your triggers, in order to potentially change your perception and response to better align with your goal (presumably happiness). This audiobook explains that it's your own inner dialogue that's causing most of the pain, and gives suggestions for how to validate that, and fix it.

Pema Chödrön's personality made this teaching enjoyable. She was direct, funny, and relatable. I appreciated all of the personal examples, poking fun at people, and cursing (unexpected, and all the more delightful from a Buddhist nun).

Highly recommended if, like me, you're interested in working on being more patient and less irritable. A timely read as I'm stuck in my NYC apartment 24/7 with my family during COVID lockdown :)

Love this book.

For me, Thich Nhat Hanh writes about Zen Buddhism perfectly. In this book he uses precisely the right words, with precisely the right tone, with just the right balance of connecting practically with modern western life.

I've been looking for a concise, powerful, and snackable book on mindfulness applied to everyday life to revisit frequently. This hits that need. It's split in to small segments, each one roughly 2 minutes to read and addressing a specific point. With segments grouped together into likeminded sections. Perfect for dipping into for 5 mins.

The back of the book references which of his books the segments came from, making this book a highly accessible jumping off point to more of his writing.

I highlighted roughly half of the passages in the book on Kindle, which is ridiculous.

My favorite sections were the initial basic section on Mindfulness, and the one on Emotions and Relationships.

It was an effort to make it to the end of this book.

I enjoyed the first quarter, particularly Dostoyevsky describing (through Myshkin) the incident where he was being executed but it was called off at the very last minute, before the shots were fired. Hearing the details of what went through his head was super interesting. The retrospective on his time in exile in Siberia was great too.

I found the main story dull. Painful levels of detail. Not a lot of change in the environment to mix things up. Had to trudge through hoping it'd perk up again (it didn't until right at the end). Parts felt like reading a daytime soap opera. Nowhere near as enjoyable as The Brothers Karamazov. There were good parables in the last 3/4, but they were scattered amongst stacks of details.

Overall, a few awesome chapters, but the majority of the book was not my jam.