Rating: 8.3/10. Textbook about the two tools in the Google marketing stack: Google AdWords and Google Analytics, with about half of the book devoted to each. The four types of marketing are: search, display, social and content. Despite popular belief, online ads are a huge market, making most of Google’s revenue, but requires some expertise…
Author: Bai Li
Stanley Park’s Secret by Jean Barman
Rating: 7.7/10. Stanley Park’s Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch and Brockton Point by Jean Barman Book about the history of Stanley Park in Vancouver, specifically the people who lived there for several decades after the area was officially designated as a park. Today, Stanley Park is marketed as a pristine wilderness,…
The Iliad by Homer
Rating: 7.5/10. An epic poem about the Trojan War, comprised of 24 books (about 600 pages), written about 700 BC, it is the oldest piece of western and Greek literature. The Iliad as well as the Odyssey were written by Homer, supposedly a blind poet, but the poems had a long oral history before it…
Maximum Canada by Doug Saunders
Rating: 8.2/10. Maximum Canada: Toward a Country of 100 Million by Doug Saunders Book about the history of immigration in Canada. Today, Canada is recognized as one of the most multicultural countries in the world, but Canada has only been multicultural fairly recently, since the 1960s. In the 19th century, Canada was set up as…
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by Don Thompson
Rating: 7.2/10. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson Book by an economist about the contemporary art market: the book’s title refers to a piece of modern art by Damien Hirst consisting of a decomposing tiger shark floating in a vat of formaldehyde, sold for several million dollars….
Agricola and Germania by Tacitus
Rating: 7.8/10. Fairly short book containing two minor works by Tacitus, a Roman historian who lived in the first century AD. The two works, Agricola and Germania, were written around the same time but on two different topics. Agricola describes the career of the author’s father-in-law, Julius Agricola, a general who conquered Britain and served…
Chip War by Chris Miller
Rating: 8.2/10. Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller Book about the history of computer chips and international geopolitics that has become entangled with the processes of manufacturing them. The COVID pandemic has highlighted the fragility of the computer chip supply chain: chips require a complex network of hundreds…
The Mental Game of Electronic Music Producers by Jason Timothy
Rating: 7.6/10. The Mental Game of Electronic Music Production: Finish Songs Fast, Beat Procrastination and Find Your Creative Flow by Jason Timothy A kind of self-help book about how to be productive as a music producer. It is important to build a habit of doing a bit of music production every day, especially finishing songs…
Learning Modern Linux by Michael Hausenblas
Rating: 8.0/10. Learning Modern Linux: A Handbook for the Cloud Native Practitioner by Michael Hausenblas Book about various parts of Linux systems, the kernel and its ecosystem. Even though I’ve used Linux for my development work for many years, a lot of this book was new to me, covering topics that most developers have interacted…
How I Built This by Guy Raz
Rating: 6.9/10. How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs by Guy Raz Book filled with stories about startups, apparently based off a podcast. The book is pretty short and there are a lot of chapters, about 25 chapters of 10 pages each; each chapter revolves around some…
Code Complete 2 by Steve McConnell
Rating: 7.2/10. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, Second Edition by Steve McConnell A fairly large book (about 850 pages) about “software construction”, essentially the process of writing code. The book is basically a long list of recommendations on how to write code that is correct and readable, kind of like a style…
Owners of the Sidewalk by Daniel M. Goldstein
Rating: 8.2/10. Owners of the Sidewalk: Security and Survival in the Informal City by Daniel M. Goldstein Book by an anthropology researcher about the informal economy in Bolivia. The informal economy is characterized by the lack of formal employer employee relationships and is a widespread phenomenon throughout Latin America, but especially in Bolivia, where over…