Adam
I went in expecting a memoir about travel interwoven into someone life - which is what this was. However, it seemed disjointed, with explorations into various trips the author took over many years. The attempts to join the trips in a larger idea fell short for me. I did finish this wanting to visit a number of places I'd never seriously considered before.
I laughed, I was confused, I wanted more from some stories and less from others. This book is actually a series of short stories about colonization of Mars. The stories are mostly funny, usually in a misunderstanding kind of way. Some stories reminded me of Twilight Zone episodes, while others of romantic comedies. Considering when this was written, it's held up amazingly well.
When I was in high school, they released a TV miniseries if The Stand that I watched. I always thought it was the best end of the world/virus take I’d seen. Not because it’s realistic or gritty, but because it frames the story with great characters battling good and evil.
When I read the book, I wondered how closely it would follow the miniseries. Turns out the show was a near scene for scene recording of the book (one of the bonuses of making it 6 hours).
What’s amazing to me about The Stand is that it follows so many characters storylines so well. It would be easy to get lost with that many characters, but somehow they fit together in a way that I didn’t feel overwhelmed. Add to that a story that had me on the edge of my seat and I see why this is considered one of the best sci fi books of all time.
This short story published in the New York Times in 1938 follows Walter Mitty as he is driving his wife to a hair appointment and running a few errands. During this afternoon out, his mind wanders to adventures, legal cases, sporting events and more. While completely different from the recent movie, the idea is still novel as a story today.
As good as the advice in this book is, it's hard to consider it groundbreaking. Part of that could be due to the prominence of these ideas in culture today. The 4 agreements are quite simple:
- Be your word (treat agreements as unbreakable)
- Don't take anything personally (it's not about you)
- Don't make assumptions (expectations without an agreement are assumptions)
- Always do your best
This is a short take on these ideas and why with just these 4 rules you can live a happier, more productive, more fulfilled life. In my past job, we did quite a number of personal development/self-help talks and exercises. The idea of agreements/expectations was a big one, so those two on this list felt directly out of that. “Don't take anything personally” reminds me of stoicism, and “always do your best” is good advice for a 1st grader on up.
While not revolutionary, these are good reminders and inspiration for sure.
I never fully understood the movie. There are long scenes without any explanation, chimps jumping up and down, unusual scenes without context. Reading this book added that context in every case. Any places I was confused or had questions have now been answered. The book is actually really good sci fi - a precursor to Interstellar or Contact I'm more ways than one. Great read by itself, or even better if you want to understand more from the movie.
Books on creativity are inspirational for me. They often give me that nudge to continue working on, thinking about or making progress on a passion project. I went into Big Magic looking for that same push, but it somehow fell short. This falls between a memoir about how Gilbert writes and a her own (somewhat unique take) about how creativity grows and spreads between people. While I'm usually able to take inspiration from a book like this, I was left more wanting to read “Eat, Prey Love” than feeling anything relating to creativity.
I enjoy reading takes on minimalism from different countries. This Swedish take is one of the closest to my own personal style than any that I've seen (even more than Konmari). It's not as catchy, but the concept is clear: life a life with an amount of stuff that you won't burden those who come after you with the weight of your stuff.
Having gone through my moms things when she passed (and she went through her moms things when she passed), this concept is quite prominent for me. For those who have never had the misfortunate of sorting through a loved ones life, it's a heavy burden to bear. Finding time to slim down pays dividends now for the living, and later for those still alive.
A 30-year decides to take a bike trip from Oregon to Patagonia with only what he can carry and a friend. This may sound like a sequel to Motorcycle Diaries, but it's actually a modern-day adventure with millennials spending time on Intagram.
The drive for travel and adventure gets people moving in different ways. For this author it meant announcing to his friends and coworkers he was going to undertake this adventure - and following trough on it.
While many books of this genre are journeys to “find myself” it felt more as though this were a journey to just do something cool and instagram worthy. To enjoy doing it for sure, but that was more the drive. I felt I could very well empathize with the narrators sometimes controlling behavior and over planning, which can be a hinderance to just enjoying the moment.
I recently realized I love real-life adventure tales. Memoirs of extraordinary journeys that are true tales. Into Thin Air is one such telling of a trip to climb Mt. Everest by a journalist writing about the commercialization of Himalayan adventures. Things go horribly wrong and the result is one of the worst years in history for climbers. I've never wanted to go to Everest (well, maybe base camp could be fun) but after reading this I feel cold just thinking about it.
I've never read anything by this author before, but after this introduction, I'm sure I'll be looking for more. This one is young adult through and through, but fun without getting too series. The world has gone downhill and heroes have risen to stabilize cities. They keep the renegades (evil people with powers) in check and maintain order - or at least that's the hope. The first book in this series follows a renegades journey into infiltrating the hero's in order to bring them down. With a tone similar to Sandersons Reckoners series, it's hard not to have fun with this one.
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 is the spiritual successor to Malcolm Gladwells “The Tipping Point”. One concept touched on in that book was the idea of stickiness - the ability for an idea to be memorable.
While there were some parts of the book that stuck with me (give strong leads, people identify with people), many of the concepts I honestly forgot about. It left me thinking this book may have been more sticky if it were shorter and stuck to only the most impactful examples.
Hatching Twitter follows the rise of Twitter through the lives of its founders and initial employees. As someone how has followed twitter since the beginning, I thought I knew the story but wow was I wrong. It turns out that there was far more power jockeying and boardroom backstabbing than I ever thought.
The way this story is told is also rather impressive. Rather than just being a telling of facts, you feel like you're there with the characters in the rooms as ideas are brainstormed or things go right (or more often wrong).
Twitter has played an outsized role in my life. The first startup I worked at where I felt true ownership of my work was a platform to connect Twitter users with advertisers to make money (before promoted Tweets were a thing). I remember going to Twitters first (and only) conference, Chirp, right around when Twitter hit 140 employees. I remember sending out a sponsored tweet manually from a Rails console that someone paid $20k to send. I remember having lunch with coworkers and friends on the floor at a Twitter event while Will.i.am had discussions over us.
Twitter holds a number of great memories for me. While this book shed light on some of the darker sides of the company, it also left me feeling how important a part it was (is) for the founders - a feeling I could easily identify with.
This short story packs a bunch of original ideas into a familiar narrative - girl going off to school. The school, however, is on another planet and consists of diverse beings, and the route there is interrupted in ways I didn't see coming. I love the idea that this short story sets up a longer series - one I plan to check out.
Dan Lyons previous book “Disrupted” ranks as one of my all time favorites. It's a look into startup culture and it's oddities. Lab Rats picks up on that with an exploration into many other companies that are all imitating and following the “startup feel” - for better or for worse.
Nearly everything mentioned gave me a hint of stress hearing about, as many were part of workplaces I was a part of (and many things that I as a manager did). As a small example, this book mentions personality tests, open offices, ping pong tables, “we are a family” mentality, burn out culture and even a mention of Domo, a company just around the corner from me that is worth billions but operates at a loss.
One theme that stands out from this book is how all these “companies for millennials” aren't actually making millennials any happier. The key to workplace happiness and even productivity is safety, something that includes physical safety, wellbeing of the company, of your job and gives room to experiment and grow. I feel like the times I've been most productive in a role have been when I've felt safe in this way as well. Lyons includes some recommendations on how we can move more companies to grow this in their cultures.
This is the finale in the Illuminae series. I enjoyed the series, with the audiobook being more like a full movie with different voice actors playing different parts. The format of this series stands out as memorable too - composed of “files” that are each a piece of evidence in a trial. This allows for jumping around between topics while still following a central thread.
What I liked about this series is that it's sci fi in space, but it still focuses on the people throughout. It never feels sci-fi first at the cost of the humans (and AI) inhabiting the world(s).
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 absolutely loved Wool, the first book in this series. That left me with somewhat heightened expectations for Shift - which were unfortunately not met. The story itself is mostly a prequel - following Donald, one of the initial creators of the silos. I enjoyed how the reader is as lost as he is - trying to find out answers constantly.
After hearing Nir give a local talk at a user group, I knew I had to check out his book. It's been on my list to read for far too long. The concepts from the book a 10/10. They're a great dive into user behavior and what triggers change in people. I feel like I learned a lot, even if the book is rather short.
The downsides though - the audiobook narrator feels like he's reading a technical manual. It's just not a good listen. Looking at the Audible reviews it's non-stop 1 star reviews for performance. The other side is that this book requites a good deal of reflection time. That's not a good fit for the audio format. I felt like I learned more from hearing Nir talk live for an hour than from the book, but I still look forward to referencing it later in products I'm building.