Rating: 7.6/10. Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu Book about the history of the Chinese language during the early 20th century, when China was beginning to modernize, and how the language and writing system coped with the challenges. It starts with Wang Zhao, a scholar who saw the…
Category: Nonfiction
Merchants of Culture by John B. Thompson
Rating: 8.1/10. Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century by John B. Thompson Book about the book publishing industry, primarily the USA and the UK. Publishers act as middlemen: they purchase content from agents, who represent the business interests of authors; they add value to the process in several ways: by content…
High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
Rating: 7.9/10. Book about the principles of management, written by the former CEO of Intel. It begins with a toy example production process of a restaurant preparing breakfast meals. The first essential principle is to organize the process around the limiting step, which is the step that takes the most time. For instance, in the…
Racing the Beam by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost
Rating: 8.0/10. Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost Book about the Atari VCS (later renamed the Atari 2600), the first widely sold home video gaming console. At first, Atari developed the games themselves, but eventually, they created a platform that allowed third-party developers to release games on…
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy
Rating: 7.6/10. Book about the history of Ukraine from ancient times until 2021, when the book was written. Ukraine was always on the frontier between Europe and Asia, for most of his history, the area was known as “Rus” or “Little Russia”, but they rarely ever were able to form their own state, rather they…
First-Time Home Buyer by Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen
Rating: 7.9/10. First-Time Home Buyer: The Complete Playbook to Avoiding Rookie Mistakes by Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen Guide to buying real estate, with a focus towards first time home buyers and assumes you’re in the United States (although most of the advice applies to Canada too). The first thing to know is that your…
The Business of Being an Artist by Daniel Grant
Rating: 7.2/10. Book about the business side of art. Ideally, your art would be displayed in a gallery where people will buy it, but galleries themselves face intense economic pressures and they need to sell most of their art in order to break even. Therefore, most artists need to do a lot of thinking like…
Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Rating: 7.4/10. Book about analyzing “systems”: basically, any collection of things that are interconnected and produce emergent properties. In many situations you will be led astray if you only look at individual events or pieces of the system, you have to analyze the system as a whole to understand its behavior. Examples of systems are:…
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 $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….
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…