Sandy

I'm pre-emptively giving this the “best book I read in 2015” award. It's witty, but more importantly, chalked full of life tactics and strategy. A significant chunk of the book covers energy-management techniques, with seemingly-solid discussions on diet and exercise aimed towards people who feel completely overwhelmed when they approach the literature in either of those topics (ie. me). I got a huge inspiration boost out of this book, and for the most part couldn't put it down – except when it inspired me to put it down and go exercise, which is a tricky feat indeed.

A list of quotes I liked from the book:
http://sandymaguire.me/books/scott-adams-how-to-fail-at-almost-everything-and-still-win-big.html

This book is showing its age. Or it's aimed at liberal arts majors. Or something. What I did gleem from it is that it's not for me. Your mileage may vary, but I'd doubt it.

More like 100 years of reading, am I right? While I loved this book, it struck me as far too dense, and as a result, my reading sessions were very short to avoid overstimulation. I read this on the suggestion of everyone whose tastes I have come to appreciate; most of them described it as their favorite book, and while it was good, I wouldn't nominate it as mine. I can see why it's a classic, and I'm happy I read it, but I doubt it will see a second reading.

Definitely showing its age; the first third of the book exclusively discusses vi (not vim), to the extent that a lot of it becomes superceded by the rest of the book. The author has a serious hard-on for troff, one in three examples of how to do things with vi(m) is “how to format for troff”, which doesn't help the relevancy issue.

Because I was reading on an ebook, the other egregious problem was a huge chunk of the book devoted to vile, kyle, elvis, and other weird vi-clones, none of which really seem to exist anymore. It's really hard to skim on an ebook, which is why I mention this.

BUT after you've got past all my nitpicking, the book is pretty good. If you're already an advanced vim-user, you probably won't get much out of it, but it's worth a skim to see if you're missing any fundamentals. I'd highly suggest the chapter on ex-commands, even if you don't look at the rest of book; I finished the book this morning and have already found a use for them.

I wanted to recommend this book, but honestly you'd probably do better just searching for vim blog posts.

Quick, useful read.

Classic Feynman. Not as good as The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, but a worthwhile read regardless.

Review 2019-12-21:
I picked this book up again, four and a half years later, while looking for a novel I thought might provide some insight into human heartache. It's a novel about the intersecting sex lives of ~6 people (and a dog, but there is no sex on that front!), set against a backdrop of the Soviet occupation of Czech. It's an amazing read, told by multiple narrators, where seemingly irrelevant details in one story become central themes of another. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a contemporary classic, and anyone who hasn't read it is doing themselves a great disservice.


Review 2015-06-14:
I don't know what to say about this book. I loved it, but I'm not sure why, nor really what I just finished reading. But yeah, I really liked it.

Short and sweet. I would have liked there to be more technical stuff (or at least, some explanation of what the technical stuff was), but hey, what can you expect for a popular autobiography? I'd recommend it.

After a few false starts due to popular science approaches to linguistics, this was exactly that book i was looking for. it's maybe a two hour read, but covers everything from linguistic genealogy to parsing to the shapes your throat needs to warp into to make any of the sound we subconsciously make thousands of times a day. Highly recommended.

Great idea, pretty terrible book.

I found myself continually wondering why the book had nothing to say about the current social justice movement; it was so spot on about everything, I figured it had to have been written recently. If you consider 60 years ago to be “recent”, I guess that's true.

This book doesn't have a lot of good things to say about human nature, nor is it very happy, but I found myself completely enthralled. By far the best book I've read in the last few years.

Review 2021: I reread this book, six years later, in an attempt to break out of a retirement/covid-related slump. It's really interesting to see the book with fresh eyes. My old review seems like it missed the point of the book — the point isn't in the things Nick did, it's in his strategies for doing them. Maybe at that time I was in a headspace where all of his techniques were familiar to me, but this time around, dang. There's so much good advice in this book. My primary takeaway is not just to precommit to goals, but to aggressively overly precommit to goals. Like, one precommitment mechanism isn't enough. Try seven. This really resonates with me and my recent lack of success with precommitment. Thanks for the great book, Nick!


Review 2015: Inspirational and well written, but I continually found myself wishing for more actionable advice about how to actually go about learning the cool things Nick did (knife throwing, anyone?). The book ends with his results, but I wish they had been fewer and more in-depth case studies about what he found worked and didn't work.

It's finally over!

A brief history of operating systems and user interfaces. It's a quick read, and has some fun soliloquys on plebians. It's not necessary reading, but it's a good distraction for an hour or two.

Only made it about 35% through; I liked the book, but it wasn't something I cared enough about to finish reading.

the ineffable sound of my entire being repeatedly smashed against a desk

I liked it, but I think most of the book has made it into contemporary culture; I found myself not learning as many things from it as I expected to.

No. Too terse. This is a terrible introduction to model theory. I don't know what to recommend, but it's not this.

I'm not sure what to think about this book; I found myself agreeing with Gatto's thesis despite all of his terrible arguments and proposed solutions for why the government monopoly education system is terrible. The book is in the form of several of Gatto's essays, but I would only suggest reading the first (The Psychopathic School – coincidentally available online for free at http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Ed/GattoPsyPathSchl.htm), as the rest of the book does little but harp on these same topics over and over.

The excerpts from the book that I liked can be found here:
http://sandymaguire.me/books/john-taylor-gatto-dumbing-us-down.html

I bought this book on the strength of one article I read and really liked on ribbonfarm.

I made a huge mistake, but I did learn something from this book – how not to write one. It's almost a textbook example: front-load with lots and lots of definitions without any motivation. I found myself continually not trusting the author, who would make wild claims with no substantiation or citation.

All in all, I got about 50% through this book but finally decided to sink the cost. That being said, I'm still going to try to get a refund.

I listened to this on audio. It was a worthwhile read, but presented few (if any) new ideas to me, someone well-versed in the motivation literature. That being said, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in motivation or who finds themselves “lost”.

This book has a lot of practical advice for getting things done. Even though I knew most of it, I found that reading the book (it's short) was worthwhile just as a source of motivation. It's going to change your life, but it might help.

This text shows its age – it's heavily wordy and pretty light on presenting things in mathematical notation. Although I have never formally studied set theory, I didn't get much out of it, though it did serve to reinforce my knowledge of some of the algebra behind sets.

Absolutely terrifying account of how easily the online media is manipulated. It's worth a read, but it will change you.

I didn't like it enough to make any real progress. Nothing against it, but the narrative didn't speak to me.