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This is officially my favorite secret project. The story as a standalone is better than Tress or Yumi, while also being steeped in Cosmere lore. Sunlit Man gives you a couple tidbits; this loads you up instead. And it does it without getting in the way at all, or making it overly difficult as a first entry into the Cosmere either.
Additionally, Tress and Yumi are great, but feel like their stories are told. Emberdark is a complete story, but it also feels like a beginning. Sanderson could very easily build the main cast into an extended series of adventures in the future Cosmere, and I would buy the hell out of them.
I can kind of see why elements capture the imagination, and how elements of the mysticism have evolved lives of their own. I don't generally have an issue separating the art from the artist, and also allowing for era. Stuff like Django Unchained, that goes heavy on slurs, but for a clear reason also doesn't bother me.
But this was just hard to get past. Between a cat named "n***** man" that is referenced by name what feels like every sentence in one story, calling people mongrels and a variety of similar terms, how other races are portrayed, and some of the ideas and tone, it just permeates the work in a way that makes it impossible for me to separate the horror from the horrifying.
So clearly, a complete collection of the short stories of a prolific writer is going to have some variance. There are some that are forgettable, and some that are just stories for the sake of stories. But Clarke relatively frequently evoked, for me, a sense of wonder, of imagination, of desire to unlock the secrets of the universe, even with the advances in science since.
He also has a knack for completely reframing a story with a new idea in the last paragraph, or even sentence, to leave you thinking.
As I read, I wrote down some of the stories I found memorable for one reason or another:
- Rescue Party
- Lion of Comarre
- Hide and seek
- Breaking Strain
- Nemesis
- Second Dawn
- Superiority
- If I forget Thee, Oh Earth
- Encounter in the Dawn
- Refugee
- The Next Tenants
- The Man Who Ploughed the Sea
- Let There Be Light
- Out of the Sun
- Cosmic Casanova
- The Songs of Distant Earth
- A Slight Case of Sunstroke
- Death and the Senator
- Before Eden
- Dog Star
- Maelstrom II
Contains spoilers
I can see why Sanderson calls this a curiosity. There are elements cannibalized (and improved on) for the Stormlight Archive, and because this isn't canon, this particular story will never be finished in that form.
The bones are damn good, though. I love Sanderson in all his varied forms, but Stormlight is stylistically my favorite, and this feels very similar, even beyond the elements he plundered, and [You Know Who] is pretty much fully developed and the fantastic character he always is in his regular Cosmere appearances.
I would not recommend this before Stormlight, because it feels like it might pull a couple punches away from it, but it is an excellent read. It's also an interesting look at his process, to see how he built kernels here into master strokes in Stormlight. Well worth it for Sanderson fans, maybe not standalone material for others because you'll never get a resolution.
This is set in the same world as Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, but a different era in a different part of it.
Lord Ingrey kin Wolfcliff has been sent to investigate the death of Prince Boleso, and bring his killer, Lady Ijada dy Castos, back to the capital to face judgement. There is no real mystery about the circumstances, as she killed him in self defense during his attempt to sacrifice her as part of a forbidden ritual, however, the tense politics and corruption around the pending succession of the throne of the dying Hallowed King make the path to a just ruling very much in question. Additionally, the interruption of the ritual has released strange, poorly understood magic.
In terms of review, I'm going to copy paste this part across all three five gods books I've read. The theology and magic are excellent. The characters are strong, and, while in desperate circumstances and compelled to take impossible risks, do so in bold and interesting ways. There's some setup to get into the action, but Bujold weaves the stories together in a way that keeps the action flowing while making it impossible to predict what will happens next, in a way that never feels forced or unearned.
This one is harder to go into details without spoilers for either it or the Curse of Chalion (read that first), but it follows Iselle's mother Ista, after the events of the first book. She feels smothered by her overattentive companions (due to the aforementioned madness) and decides her only escape is a holy pilgrimage. Her household questions her capacity to make this decision and tries to surround her with enough pomp and ceremony to prevent anything interesting from happening, but she ultimately gets her wish for an adventure. She does not, being God-touched once before to disastrous result, get her wish to avoid the influence of the Gods once again. She must confront her past head on, and make peace with both the Gods and herself.
In terms of review, I'm going to copy paste this part across all three five gods books I've read. The theology and magic are excellent. The characters are strong, and, while in desperate circumstances and compelled to take impossible risks, do so in bold and interesting ways. There's some setup to get into the action, but Bujold weaves the stories together in a way that keeps the action flowing while making it impossible to predict what will happens next, in a way that never feels forced or unearned.
Malcolm Gladwell maybe has a place introducing ideas in broad strokes, but it's a lower tier of informative than books written by psychologists who have broad understanding of the research and have done some original study of their own. If you want an extremely accessible introduction to the idea of expertise and the value of practice, this is OK, but he doesn't pretty clearly understand the science and the book is riddled with inaccuracy as a result.
If you want a well sourced, more comprehensive understanding of what the research does and doesn't say, and how to apply the principles supported by the research, read Peak by K Anders Ericsson and Robert Poole. It's denser, but it discusses some of the flaws of Gladwell's presentation and is overall held to a more rigorous standard.
This is the Bias Bible. If you want to get a brief overview of how your brain works, and lots of information on how you aren't the rational actor you see yourself as, this is the book.Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on human judgement covered in this book, and played a key role in the development of the field of behavioral economics. If you read one book on the brain, this is the one.
(If this is overwhelming and you want an accurate, but less in depth alternative, I also highly recommend Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.)
If you want an inscrutable text on moral philosophy that covers every possible interpretation of every influence in the field, this isn't it. You may or may not gain anything if you've read the huge body of philosophy material that's out there.
But for the rest of us (even those with reasonable high level understanding of many of the core ideas he covers), this is an approachable, humorous presentation of many of the main schools of thought that are out there. Micheal Schur did his research for the show The Good Place (or The Good Place arose from his interest in philosophy). It showed in the questions the (excellent) show contemplated during its run, and the core "just try to be better" idea is definitely a key takeaway from the book as well.
You won't become a moral philosophy professor from reading this book, but it does give you some tools to make better choices tomorrow than you did yesterday, and it does it without being the chore to read that a lot of other work on the subject can be.
I'm glad her mom died, too.
Jennette McCurdy is hilarious. Her mom is the textbook "living through her kid" Hollywood parent, and it's not comfortable. But the way she tells her story is fantastic. She communicates her innermost thoughts in an incredibly transparent, non-judgmental way, while at the same time highlighting how absurd her damaged thought process was through an excellent sense of comedic timing and structure.
This story could easily come across as incredibly dark, because it is, and in many cases similar situations have turned out with dark ends as well. Fortunately, Jennette made it through and got the help she needed to grow into an incredibly healthy person. Both how broken she was, and the fact that she's better now, come across crystal clear just through the way she tells the series of stories. I am generally not a fan of memoirs, but I'm glad I made an exception for this book.
Contains spoilers
Lupe dy Cazaril, Royesse Iselle dy Chalion, and Betriz dy Ferrej are up against a powerful curse that plagues the land and the Chalion royal line, as well as corruption that rules the land in the name of Iselle's half brother Orico. The curse has driven Iselle's mother Ista mad, rendered Orico incapable of rule, and is coming for Iselle next. With little but their wits and strength of will to guide them, they must clear the curse and cleanse the land.
In terms of review, I'm going to copy paste this part across all three five gods books I've read. The theology and magic are excellent. The characters are strong, and, while in desperate circumstances and compelled to take impossible risks, do so in bold and interesting ways. There's some setup to get into the action, but Bujold weaves the stories together in a way that keeps the action flowing while making it impossible to predict what will happens next, in a way that never feels forced or unearned.
Contains spoilers
Wow. I'm not going to go into detail, but what a ride.
The main spoiler bit is that I was expecting more arcs to conclude, but he pivoted the whole thing into feeling like a true beginning of the war for the Cosmos. I do hope the choice of timescale for the next half doesn't cut too hard on the threads he left open.It's pretty clear there will be some passage of time, but most of the characters don't feel like their stories are finished.
I really enjoyed her other two books. “Thinking in Bets” is a really respectable lighter alternative to Thinking Fast and Slow while still being backed hard by the science.
This one really spoke to me, though. It's not the only book that advocates for embracing failure/when to walk away, but the way she outlines the thought process and just how extremely well supported it is really struck a chord for me. I feel like this book frees me to take moonshots in a way nothing else has managed.
Is this the single definitive Karen Rose book? Nah. If you haven't read her work, I recommend starting at the start of a city. That's Quarter to Midnight here, or Say You're Sorry, or Closer than You Think, among others. (Warning that most of them have children victimized somewhere, though not directly depicted. The real world is dark and she doesn't shy away from that).
But even a less standout Karen Rose book is really well crafted, with believably broken characters who heal over the course of the book. She's a master of her craft, and my personal favorite author. Minus a little main character plot armor, every lengthy mystery is incredibly believable and full of characters it's hard not to like (or hate). As an avid reader of nonfiction psychology, all of her motivations of all of her characters hold up really well to me.
This book specifically is fine standalone, but Phin's history with his family as a result of his PTSD is something you see start in Alone in the Dark, and there's been a level of suspense seeing him as a side character in the New Orleans series, waiting for his turn. The resolution of his relationships are emotional and reasonably well done.
Karen Rose is a master at her craft and I'd happily put any of her 26 mainline Romantic Suspense series against any other mystery/suspense book out there. Her story telling is masterful and her characters are extremely well fleshed out. As an added bonus for the audiobook format, Hilary Huber (from the Cincinnati series) is back with her excellent interpretation of Rose's subtext.
Cold Blooded Liar has Rose's trademark flavor, but the pacing is slightly different. Her other novels fully explore the two primary characters over the course of their 500-600 pages. Cold Blooded Liar only scratches the surface, and combined with the altered naming convention, sets the expectation of future books in the sub series where their story continues to be at center stage. Because Rose is my favorite author and has stuck to the same excellent pacing (with each book exploring a new pair of primary characters, but strong continuity of the story line among different groups in different cities), the departure caught me a bit off guard. However, as I have often wanted to see many of her characters more, I look forward to seeing how the story of Sam and Kit develops over future books.
If you've read Stephanie Plum, you have a good idea how Janet Evanovich writes. It's absurd, nonsensical, and amusing. If you want a realistic plot, you won't find it. If you're willing to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride, you're in for a good time.
The Recovery Agent is more of the same, in the best possible way. It is written in third person, so while mostly focused on Gabriella Rose, it allows brief perspective shifts to fill in the blanks of other people's actions. Gabriella describes herself in her Stephanie Plum appearance as “skilled, but unlucky”, and the result is a steadier stream of progress that allows her the resources to span the globe for a light fun adventure.
This book is excellent. Much like Kahneman's* definitive book on bias, Thinking Fast and Slow, Noise provides an excellent, fairly comprehensive treatment of another source of error in human judgement, which the authors define as noise. Noise is, as a term in this book, used to describe inconsistency in human judgment, as opposed to bias, which is a systematic departure from “correct” results. There is some overlap in terms here, as, for example, hungry judges systematically make harsher decisions, which is referred to as bias in Thinking Fast and Slow, but because we're looking at error across the entire range of outcomes in a different way here, is called occasion noise. I do not believe this detracts from what the book brings to the table, but it's worth noting that in this book, bias is used to refer to the difference between the average outcome and the “correct” outcome, or other errors across the range of outcomes such as minorities being treated differently in cases where there isn't a “correct” outcome to measure.
What this book does not do is claim that all noise should be completely eliminated. Eliminating noise has costs. However, a wide disparity of outcomes in similar cases can be extremely unfair. Should two people with similar histories and mitigating/aggravating factors have several years of difference in sentencing for the same crime? Should the luck of who evaluates your insurance policy or what mood they're in when they do make hundreds of dollars in difference to your premiums or policy payouts? Certain types of judgements are judgements where inconsistency is inherently unfair.
Noise looks at these judgements. It looks at hiring decisions where projection is inherently difficult and outcomes are hard to evaluate. It looks at expert judgement in fields like forensics where experts are asked to make evaluations of objective facts and whether there is noise in those outcomes as well.
I feel like I should be writing many more paragraphs about this book, but for now I'll leave it here. This book is held to a high standard of rigor and is evidence backed throughout, again in line with Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. The two books combine to provide an extreme amount of information on how to improve your judgement as an individual or an organization. I highly recommend this book and it will be very close to the top of my list of “must read” books on intelligence and the human brain.
*There are three authors here and I don't wish to downplay any role of Cass Sunstein or Oliver Sibony, which I am obviously not in position to evaluate. This book has led me to investigate their other work and likely will result in me reading at least one from each. However, Kahneman is the most well known partly because he's one of the most influential figures in the field of human judgement, widely cited by psychologists and behavioral economists, and Thinking Fast and Slow is in my opinion is probably the best book on the brain everyone should read.
This book is 45 years old at this point, but it ages well. If you could ignore the handful of references to computers and floppy disks of the era, you could believe it was written relatively recently. We have, of course, learned since it was initially written, and the 30th anniversary edition I read did include some helpful interjections in addition to the extra chapters added to the second edition in 1989.
The Selfish Gene is and continues to be wildly popular for a reason. It provides an extremely accessible explanation of the mechanism of evolution, popularizing the concept that the gene is the fundamental building block that the whole process revolves around. What's a gene? The definition he uses is approximately “any sequence of any length of DNA”, with the understanding that shorter sequences are more likely to survive longer unaltered than longer sequences, but allows him to ignore quibbling over terminology of specific lengths when it's largely not meaningful to the concepts being presented.
The core idea is that genes that are successful are genes that increase the number of copies of themselves in existence. It explains the concept that there is a mechanism for even extreme “altruism”, such as an organism sacrificing itself for others to be selected for, if you recognize that multiple close kin relations each have many of their genes in common with that individual, and that dying saving several siblings increases the number of copies of your genes propagated to future generations than failing to do so.
It goes further into many other elements of how to view evolution from the perspective of individual genes, in specific environments, and how natural selection does and doesn't work to change species over time.
One thing I'm not sure I was aware of, going into this reading of the book, is that Dawkins also coined the term “meme” and gave the first(?) presentation of ideas as replicators subject to very similar selection pressures as genes. This explanation is relatively simple and there are entire books on the concept now, but I did enjoy his short treatment here.
The signal and the noise is all about prediction. It starts with the subprime mortgage financial crisis and discusses the combination of perverse incentives and overconfidence that caused the rating services to fail to accurately portray the risks of those securities (primarily the assumption that even with housing prices astronomically high, the risk of default of each individual mortgage was completely independent rather than affected by the economy). Next he looks at television pundits and the fact that more television appearances is negatively correlated to forecast accuracy. Here he gives a solid introduction to Philip Tetlock's work on forecasting, which can be found in more depth in his book Superforecasting. He touches on baseball, an information-rich environment, before moving on to irreducibly complex problems like the weather, seismic activity, and the economy where you fundamentally can't get anywhere near enough raw data or information on interactions between data points to paint a complete picture.
The second half moves towards giving you an idea how to approach problems probabilistically and how to improve and refine your process over time. He starts with simple problems like sports and poker before moving onto more complex problems like terrorism and global warming.
I wouldn't consider this book a complete guide to rational, evidence based decision making (ignoring that it doesn't give you the math), but it's a pretty accessible introduction to the topic and is largely technically sound. It's a solid place to start.
Brethren is fascinating as a demonstration that even at the level of the highest court in the US, that was created and is intended for the purpose of objectively interpreting laws, human nature reigns supreme. It's centered around Chief Justice Warren E Burger's court from 1969-1975, and paints a particularly uncomfortable picture of and both his leadership ability and his legal mind, but it goes beyond any one individual.
There are several interesting cases decided during this span. To me the most notable would be a couple desegregation cases, primarily involving bussing, the Pentagon papers, Roe v Wade, and the Nixon tapes. The story this book tells involves multiple justices conspiring to rework Burger's opinions sentences at a time, others threatening to dissent over single phrases, Burger repeatedly changing his votes just to be able to assign the majority opinion, justices telling each other, “I don't agree with this ruling but I'm going to be the fifth vote anyways to make Justice X happy”, and all sorts of other manipulation and gamesmanship.
Ultimately you're relying on the word of the authors, and I believe they're fairly credible, but I can't speak to veracity. But man, the story it tells is terrifying and this is well worth a read.
This is the story of precision engineering from precisions of .1 to 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 01, or early cannons and steam engines through guns and automobiles, modern jet airplanes, then ultimately to modern microprocessors and the tools scientists are using to investigate the universe at infinite and infinitesimal scales.
I don't think this book is perfect, but it's pretty well written and provides a cohesive narrative of how we, as humans, have sought and achieved more and more ridiculous levels of replicable precision and how even small imperfections can cause catastrophic damage with the tolerance high performance products are designed for. It's not at the top of my list, but it's a pretty good read and you'll learn a little.
This is second on my all time list behind Kahneman. This thing is huge, it's as close to a comprehensive multi-field discussion of human behavior I've seen, and it manages to stay coherent, well structured, and compelling throughout.
This book goes from the basic structure and biology of neurons, the brain, neurotransmitters and hormones, genetic elements of behavior, epigenetics, development of the brain and behavior from early in pregnancy through adolescence and how negative events (malnutrition, abuse, neglect) alter that development, a pretty damn in depth discussion of evolution and the various selection processes in play from survival of the individual to close family to the species as a whole, and how social structures and culture influence behavior just to lay the groundwork for how much goes into any single decision.
The second part starts to look into behavior closer to directly through the lens of research by psychology. It starts with in-group bias, with solid coverage of how researchers have manipulated whether people feel someone is an us or a them. Next is peer pressure. Excellent coverage of Milgram's electric shock work and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Really there's a lot here and touching on every subject in depth. What I will say is that the psychology, which is the material I'm most familiar with, is presented masterfully, engaging, does a good job of being clear on what the research does and doesn't say, and consistently refers back to the groundwork in the first part of the book.
There is a third part where he discusses what we should take away from all of this, and he loses me a bit at points in the discussion of the justice system. I'm not entirely sure what he's trying to say. But he comes back strong with discussions of how to work past large scale conflict including war and even genocide, then the overall message that we can use our understanding of context to frame things in ways that allow us to be better to the people around us and drive positive change. Overall with some very minor hiccups, he manages to keep a consistent thread throughout this absolutely insanely broad work. He doesn't just skim through topics. There's a solid level of depth throughout. The organization is excellent. To the best of my ability to determine, it's one of the best sourced books I've read. He does all this while keeping a light, not too serious tone and throwing in mild wit and wordplay in a way that adds to the level of engagement.
If that's not enough, the appendices are great too.
Cuddy has a TED talk that is a reasonable introduction to the content in this book.
This book talks a fair bit about body language, but instead of what it tells others, the primary focus is about using body language to communicate with yourself, and uses her own academic work, along with some others, to allow yourself to behave with confidence and set yourself up to project your genuine belief in yourself of your ideas to others. The TED talk might be sufficient for you, but if you want to go a touch deeper and get basic information about the research and methodology this is a sold read.