Tyler Kieft

I didn't love this as much as I thought I would, or as much as reading the novel. The flow of Proust's sublime sentences was broken up by the graphic novel format, and I found it difficult to get into the rhythm of his words, distracted by the pictures and needing to figure out which panel came next. In addition, the abridgment lacked the depth of the original story.

Swann's Way is about memory and imagination and the nature of childhood to endow ordinary scenes with special meaning. Reading it is a very personal, mysterious experience. The provided images took away from that, preventing communion with my own mind and my own memories, and from reflecting more deeply on the nature of Proust's ideas.

Five stars for the novel, three for this incarnation.

Interesting, thought-provoking book. A little bit long-winded maybe. Definitely caused me to rethink how I relate to God. Loved the chapters on friendship (loving friends freely) and being/loving yourself.

Second time through I liked this book more, but not enough to bump it up a star. I found it much more chilling, more believable. I also understood it better because I already had context on the plot. Still think it's not well-written, with an overreliance on simile and a confusing narrative structure.

damn. this series was sooo good. can't wait for the reread

Holy crap it's getting good.

Instagram's engineering director, Jim Everingham, recommended this book to me in a recent 1:1 to help me understand the process of finding new ideas to be excited about working on. There's a story in here about Feynman letting his mind wander and play, watching dishes rotate in the cafeteria, and discovering new physical laws because of it.

I've always admired Richard Feynman, and his set of Physics lectures has been on my to-read list for at least a decade. And after reading this book, I admire him even more. He's a mathematical and scientific genius, which makes it no surprise that he occasionally comes off as stubborn and arrogant, but I was delighted to also read about how humble and insecure he was throughout his life. At times when he was burned out, he thought he might be a fraud, that everyone could see right through him, that he would never have another good idea. Like myself, he'd say what was on his mind in academic discussions, only to wonder whether his ideas were totally off the wall, and if he'd be embarrassed for sharing them.

I loved most of this book; it's an easy read because the stories are outrageous and Feynman is a really funny, personable guy. Some of my favorite parts were:

• The chapter on teaching as a way of getting new ideas: If you're teaching a class, you can think about the elementary things that you know very well. These things are kind of fun and delightful. It doesn't do any harm to think them over again. Is there a better way to present them? Are there any new problems associated with them?...The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I've though about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. • His thoughts on living up to others' expectations: “‘You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it's impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!' ... I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they're offering me some money for it, it's their hard luck.” • His constant delving into other subject areas, such as music and art. His learning to be quite good at things he thought he had no talent at (to the point where he was selling his art for a lot of money). By exploring totally unrelated fields, he could draw new lessons on how they compared to physics (such as art being learned by osmosis, vs. experimental physics being taught by techniques)

Feynman loves science and the scientific method. I thought I understand the scientific method, now I understand it better. He also loves learning, and thinking, and creating new knowledge. This man was at the top of his craft, and this book was an inspiring read because of it.

I liked this novel, and I loved parts of it, but I didn't love it as a whole. Viewed as a series of vignettes, it's wonderful, but when viewed as a full story I thought it was plodding, lacked a plot arc, and left a bunch of interesting storylines hanging. The main character makes decisions without giving much justification (his suicide attempt, becoming a waiter at the Boyarsky) and the ending seemed like it came out of nowhere and had very little to do with the rest of the book.

Perhaps this is meant to mirror real life - people come in and out of it abruptly, threads trail off with no artistic close like in a novel. But I don't think the purpose of art is to perfectly mirror real life.

I was also frustrated by the manner of telling the story - the disjointed jumps from year to year with little transition.

I'm not a reader who needs plot to drive a story, but my impression at the close of the story was “Why?” Why does this book exist, and what was I supposed to be left with? I didn't think any of it was particularly memorable, and I suppose it will fade away quickly.

Read for the inaugural meeting of #bookstagram NYC. We had a great discussion on April 3.

Pretty solid advice. Some of it is a little bit out of date, and often I felt the book was targeted to a more junior developer than myself, but there is some really good low-level information about the Objective-C runtime tucked in here as well.

“Corporate elites said they needed free-trade agreements, so they got them. Manufacturers said that they needed tax breaks and public-money incentives in order to keep their plants operating in the United States, so they got them. Banks and financiers needed looser regulations, so they got them. Employers said they needed weaker unions–or no unions at all–so they got them. Private equity firms said they needed carried interest and secrecy, so they got them. Everybody, including Lancastrians themselves, said they needed lower taxes, so they got them. What did Lancaster and a hundred other towns like it get? Job losses, slashed wages, poor civic leadership, social dysfunction, drugs.”

This is the right book for right now, America 2017, divided, angry, fearful, grossly unequal. This is the book that everyone should have been talking about last year, when instead we were reading [b:Hillbilly Elegy 27161156 Hillbilly Elegy A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis J.D. Vance http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1463569814s/27161156.jpg 47200486], a far inferior explanation of the “Trump phenomenon”, limited by the age and wisdom of its author and its inherent scope as a memoir.

Brian Alexander, native son, chronicles the history of Lancaster, OH and its once-largest employer, Anchor Hocking, maker of glassware. He begins in the 1950's: town and company are both strong, prospering in a symbiotic relationship. Lancaster is a happy place to be: kids growing up and going to state schools, pride in local sports and events, a sense of growth and moving forward. Anchor Hocking's management lives in Lancaster and is invested in the community. Globalization and macroeconomics creep up on Anchor, however, and then it's blindsided by the vulture capitalism of the 1980's, full-tilt Friedmanism, the pursuit of shareholder value above all. The company is tossed between private equity (also known as “leveraged buyout”) firms, its assets gutted, its long-term value hollowed out to provide cash flow to its managers, sitting in towers in New York City, who will rid themselves of the company after a few years. This continues up until the late present day, where Anchor's most recent owners (post-bankruptcy creditors) have finally realized their asset's latent value and are tentatively investing in growing its equity.

Through this tale he weaves this narrative with the political and social themes that recur ad nauseam in our fractured society: guns, drugs, racism, “welfare queens” and “Obama phones”, health care, joblessness, inequality and the divide between “coastal elites” and “backwards small towns”, labor unions, churches, Republicans vs. Democrats, the new service/knowledge economy, and immigration. Hanging over the narrative is the unspoken conclusion, Donald Trump's unlikely ascendancy to power, as the consequence of the last 50 years of economic and social policy.

I have rarely been sadder or more angry reading a book. Reading about the unfettered greed of the last 40 years, the total disregard for communities and human lives practiced by the private equity firms and financiers involved in gutting so many of America's legendary brands (built up over decades) in the pursuit of short-term cash flow was sickening. These financial engineers came in and said that they could find business efficiencies, when in reality they knew nothing about the business or industry. Instead, they ran the companies into the ground, saddled by massive debt.

Furthermore, the Republican Party, which is unabashedly pro-business, blamed these problems on every scapegoat in sight - immigrants, regulation, globalization, etc. And they managed to blind their constituents to the real culprit: big business, and Wall Street financial firms. Democrats are hardly immune from criticism either, but not to the same extent. The massive fraud perpetrated on the American working class in the name of economic growth has instead led to robbing small communities of all their wealth, and concentrating it in the hands of the very few. And we will be paying for it, in the form of social instability, for many decades to come.

Glass House doesn't have the smooth lyricism of “The Unwinding” but perhaps that contributes to its power. The rawness of its words, the barely-contained frustration, will cause me to remember this story for a long time. The writing suffers at points, but it isn't by any means bad. At times the author is wistful, yet avoids easy nostalgia and sentimentality. I couldn't keep all the characters straight - some of their stories were just too similar.

I would have liked to know more about the conditions that made Anchor Hocking weak leading up to the 1980's - the rise of Walmart, the fluctuations in fuel prices overseas, amongst other things - which the author glosses over in a few paragraphs. But on the whole this book is meticulously researched and reported. I'd recommend it to anyone searching for answers, who is not content with the “personal responsibility” narrative, or the “globalization” narrative, or any of the other hollow-sounding reasons why we have a country that's so messed up.

“Why didn't they just move away?” ask elites of all stripes. Woven throughout the book is a strong defense of community, of history, of ties to family, friends, acquaintances, a group of people supporting each other through good and bad times. It's hard to leave that support system behind, regardless of whether or not you can afford to. We need better answers from our economy, from our elected officials, on how to make America work for everyone in the 21st century.

Trashy, but delightful. Once I realized that this book was basically an upscale gossip rag, I was surprised by how much I liked it. I saw a lot of myself in Mary Ann - the hesitance to integrate into the life of the city, small-town sensibilities aghast at the openness of San Francisco residents in the 70's. In addition, she struggles with whether or not to stay or go, a transience and sense of non-belonging that I'm sure every San Francisco emigrant has once faced. I enjoyed the references to so many familiar places and neighborhoods. And I was drawn in by the plot! Excited to hear the latest romantic exploits and find out the secrets of these characters. I felt like I knew them as friends by the end.

I don't think I'll read any of the sequels, but I'm glad I finally read this ‘seminal' SF novel. Perhaps I'll check out the TV miniseries at some point, as much for historical interest as anything.

Wow, I'm so glad I read this again. Either I'm misremembering how I felt about it in high school (which is entirely possible) or I got much more out of this story at age 30 than I did at age 16. Probably a little bit of both.

I had always remembered the incredible imagery of “Great Expectations” - the marshes, the graveyard where Pip first meets his convict, the opulent decay of Satis house - Dickens is one of the greatest scene-setters in the business. And of course the dream, so gripping and enticing to my 18-year-old self, of being marked with expectations, given a mysterious benefactor and made into a gentleman.

Fourteen years later, I am struck by the depictions of human nature and social class. The rich are uncaring assholes, willing to trod on anyone below them to gain a leg up in society, while the poor are often good and caring and just. Nowhere is this more painful to watch than in Pip himself, who abandons his family, spends frivolously, and generally acts like a complete toad in the first few years of his ‘expectations'. It's incredible how willing he is to look past people's true nature and see what he wants to see there (Estella, Miss Havisham, Magwitch upon their initial meeting).

I read this with echoes of my own life. There has been more than one instance over the last decade, as I've begun my career and made some money, that I've acted like Pip, or at least thought like him. Which is horrifying.

These are not one-dimensional characters which Dickens paints. I forgot about Pip's constant internal struggle, Miss Havisham's eventual realization and regret for what she'd done, and Estella's recognition of Pip's innate goodness and honor. And at the end of the novel, Pip's struggle resolving in favor of love and devotion to Magwitch, his return to Joe, and his humbling himself to become a clerk in Clarriker's house.

Lastly, who can fail to recognize our own modern society in the description of the unfair trial that Magwitch was given? His punishment being so much greater than Compeyson, even though Compeyson was the mastermind, because he could not afford good representation, and he ‘looked the part'. We still use class to help fill out our first impression of people, especially those convicted of crimes.

Finally, I love Dickens' constantly tongue-in-cheek tone, his satire and almost-caricatured descriptions of his characters. His general lightness leaves you unguarded for the more sentimental passages that he writes, making them almost surprising in their simplicity, directness, and beauty. For example, this line from near the end of the story:

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no better words that I could say beside his bed, than `O Lord, be merciful to him, a sinner!'

I love the arc of the story, the characters, the excitement of the plot, and the cautionary messages it leaves you with. Five stars.

So let me save you the time...this is basically a terrible, curse-laden, poorly-written version of Ender's Game. As is usual with these kinds of books, it moves along at a brisk pace, and the writing draws you in - I read most of the book in a single day. I was caught up in the story and wanted to find out what happened, but I got nothing else from the writing.

The book just starts - WHAM - and throws you into the action. This would be a great tactic, except the author failed to actually make me care about the situation or the characters, and so it just felt abrupt and jarring. The timing was off, the pace accelerated too fast.

Interestingly enough, the most poorly-written scenes in the book were the battle scenes. They were short, lifeless, and much more ‘tell' than ‘show'. You could almost feel the author's boredom coming through the writing - I wouldn't be surprised if they were his least favorite scenes to write.

Read this book if you like: - As many smart-aleck wink wink references to 80's pop culture as possible, no matter how tangential the storyline - Characters that didn't feel like real people. Emotional depth on the level of Hallmark Channel movies. Stilted dialogue - Plot holes Why couldn't they shut the drone launch tunnel security door and just destroy Zack's drone and the enemy ship? It would have resulted in the loss of a single unmanned drone.... - Amateur writing. It was repetitive: characters kept describing the situation they were in over and over, perhaps for dramatic effect. It was also not as tight as a book like, say, Ender's Game. Zack is described as having a temper, and we see him get in a fight at the beginning of the book, similar to Ender. However, Ender's anger is revealed to be something profound - he has just enough of it, in combination with deep care and love, which makes him the only possible candidate to fight the aliens. Zack's temper just makes him a dick to his dad and makes him want to shoot as many aliens as possible. Yuck - Unbridled, over the top cursing.

One thing I liked about this book: The ending was seriously cool. I'm not sure if it was original (probably not) but it was the only part of the book that really made me think.

Pretty good for what it is I suppose. Somewhat repetitive from story to story, and certainly far from profound, but it made me laugh. The situations that Bertie and Bingo and Jeeves got tangled up in were fairly creative and funny. The writing had a good tempo, the stories moved along at a good pace. I loved the tone of Bertie, the narrator, and the fact that he's a bit of a bumbler - rich enough where he doesn't have to worry about real problems, but always relying on Jeeves to get him out of the social tension he gets mixed up in. He speaks with the easy fluidity of the upper class, but with enough naiveté that you don't hate him for it.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to review this one right after I read it, so it's a bit cloudy at this point.

I really liked this book. The pacing is slow and deliberate, which didn't put me off. I was a little annoyed by the medieval-style language, particularly the main character's use of the word “princess” to address his wife over...and over...and over.

But otherwise, I have a lot of praise. The ending was haunting: a slow, emotional climax of melancholy rather than action.

I suspect I'll remember the meditations in here for a while: the meaning and usefulness of memory, of forgetting, and the possible futility of both in the face of certain death for us all.

Pretty good book. Entertaining for sure. Much better writing than Ready Player One, not that it's amazing writing but it met the acceptability bar for sure.

I got bored twice during the book. The first time was near the beginning, when I thought the whole book was going to be his journal. Thank god for the narration switch to Earth and NASA HQ. The second time was similar, when Mark was finishing making his rover modifications before the journey to the Ares 4 MAV. I got sick of the detailed science stuff at that point.

I was expecting to get annoyed by the narrator after a while, but I never did. Great job making him wryly funny but not crossing the line.

I found myself daydreaming about space travel while reading. How amazing it would be to actually set foot on another planet. Not sheer terror to be abandoned there, but just excitement at exploration. I guess that's one sign the book succeeded.

Four stars because its all plot and science. Very little depth to the characters. Mark doesn't ever talk much about his loneliness even. It's just not that kind of novel. Still, there was so much imagination required to create this story, everything is meticulously realistic but futuristic at the same time, and that's how it really shines.

Lost track of how many times I cried reading this. Somehow this thing that has been so meaningful to me over the past four months became even more meaningful, peering directly into the creator's mind via his annotations. Thank you, Lin-Manuel.

Read the last 80% of this book in a single afternoon. It was overall a quick, compelling read, but I only award it 4 stars because it felt rough at times, like it had been unedited.

This book is being promoted and reviewed as one explanation for Trump's popularity this election cycle. It is not that, at least not directly. It is a simply-narrated memoir of Vance's 30 years growing up and ultimately “escaping” his Appalachian hillbilly origins. I say escaping in quotes because one never really can escape one's past - and Vance touches on this fact (reminding me of the biography of Robert Peace I read earlier this year). Along with the very real presence of a drug-addict mother who is still in his life, the constant disruptions in his childhood left him with very real emotional trauma and overdeveloped stress reactions to situations that other people would handle calmly.

Again, this is not a book about the presidential race or Donald Trump, but rather a depiction of the cultural, social, and economic problems facing a certain group of working-class whites in our country today, which might help us understand the current political landscape. Vance weaves in statistics gleaned from social science research throughout his writing, but the book succeeds on the strength of its narrative. He writes about his family members in a very nuanced way that shows maturity - no one is either completely a hero or a villain.

Surprisingly, the best parts of the book are his grandparents - his Mamaw and Papaw. It's not the stories of the craziness and chaos of the world he grew up in that will stick with me, but rather the efforts of two far-from-perfect individuals to provide a safe space for his life and set him on a track to rise above the situation of his family.

The lessons in the book resist easy government policy fixes. Vance himself doesn't spend many pages trying to offer solutions, and he admits that he doesn't have many ideas. He skewers liberals for wanting to provide more welfare, more social support, saying that many of the people he met had plenty of opportunity to participate in the economy but chose instead to quit their jobs and blame Obama. One anecdote that really stuck with me is a young Vance, looking at the line-item on his taxes remarking that he was forced by the government to buy his neighbor T-Bone steaks via welfare when he himself would never have spent money on that. He also rips the right for not encouraging people to engage with society - for stirring up broad cultural anger without directing attention at anything positive. He laments the lack of an American role model in society for his kind of people - Barack Obama is too much a product of the elite to connect with these people in the way that Bill Clinton or George Bush did, and there are no astronauts or military leaders like in decades past. Our society now worships “elites”, and this has left the working class feeling like the communal fabric is coming apart. (This is the setup for Trump - a charismatic, strong leader preaching old-school values)

The book could have been tightened up a bit. There were a number times Vance introduced an idea and never followed up on it, dropping themes and threads that seemed like they would be interesting. I wish there had been a more consistent direction to the book - it felt like the only thing tying the whole memoir together was the linear passage of time. Still, a great read and a great reminder of how insulating it can be to grow up a member of the coastal elite and how easy it is to dismiss whole classes of people whom you don't even know.

I loved this book as a kid. A celebration of individuality, experience, emotion, and human relationships.

Never really got into it. 3.5 stars

2016: The year of Hamilton. I am so glad I decided to read this book after seeing the musical in May - it deepened my appreciation for Hamilton and for the founding story of the United States. The success of the American project was never assured, and no book or history lesson ever made that clearer than this one did. This is an ambitious read - 731 pages of small, dense, type. It took me two and a half months to finish (although I read the bulk of it within the past half month). In a way I'm glad for this - I feel like the lessons and content will stick with me much longer because I have kept coming back to them.

Meticulously researched, the book is brimming with details about Hamilton's life, combined in a way which (according to the author) depicts Hamilton very differently than previous biographers have ever done. Hamilton's legacy was overlooked or minimized by many in the past, probably because he never attained the office of the President.

My favorite part of the book was immediate the post-revolution period, as the country tried to figure out what it wanted to be: a loose confederation of states, or a united nation. I hadn't realized that the Constitution came so long after the war ended, and was never assured. Hamilton's role in the political theorizing that led directly to our current governmental structure was massive. Not only a theorist, he also made more contributions than anyone else to the government's implementation - setting up many of our first national institutions and defining the frameworks in which the different branches of power could be articulated. I was fascinated learning about the political and economic underpinnings of our current nation. You can trace a direct path between Hamilton's national bank, markets, and financial culture in New York City to today's world.

The book differed from the show in one large way. The show's main villain was Aaron Burr, whereas the book spent much more time expounding on the feud between Hamilton and the Virginians - Jefferson and Madison. I suspect this was mostly due to wanting to present a compelling show, with a single arch-villian. But it would be interesting to read a biography of Burr as a follow up here.

Hamilton's downfall is tough to watch, as it was largely self-imposed and coincided with an intensely vitriolic period of American politics. To watch this great man sink so low, get caught up in the petty sniping and accusations of the day, ultimately going so far as to cause his death, is brutal. I was left with the impression that, despite having an extramarital affair, the real cause of his political downfall was his inability to be political - his uncompromising principles, his desire to protect his legacy at all costs, and his growing difficulty as he aged in reconciling what the people wanted with what he thought was best for them.

An amazing book about an amazing man - the most prolific, intellectual founding father. It's so neat that this story is finally coming to light in a way that so many people can engage with it, deepening our appreciation for and understanding of our shared history.

meh

Super engaging book, couldn't put it down, but the writing is awwwwful

Great, quick read. perhaps a bit biased, I'm not sure given that I didn't live through most of these time periods. It was really resonating with me though.

my favorite of the series...

One of the best books I've ever read. I'm so glad I picked this up (based on a friend's Facebook recommendation last year).

Reading Just Mercy made me angry and sad. The stories within, about gross, terrible miscarriages of justice, are tragic. They speak to inequality, racism, elitism, and deep wounds in our society that we don't like to talk about and have made little recent progress towards healing. It's unbelievable that the large parts of this country still have not moved past the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that there is still so much racial injustice, but in ways that are pernicious and hidden.

I was anti-death penalty before I picked up this book, but I didn't know how truly unequal and capricious it was until after I read it. The lack of justice in our judicial system is astounding.

I can't believe we executed children for a long time in this country, and that up until the last 5 years they could still be sentenced to die in prison. I can't believe that more than 150 people on death row have been exonerated since the 1970's. I can't believe that we have jailed millions of people, largely people of color, for petty crimes in the last few decades.

I like Bryan's maxim: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done”. This is a good and useful way to look at the world.