Rating: 7.1/10. A collection of relatively short essays about classical piano, each approximately 10 pages long, by an American pianist and composer. All these essays are independent, each exploring a different aspect of the subject, and are organized into five distinct sections: The Performer: talks about the role of the performer in interpreting the composer’s…
Category: Nonfiction
Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen
Rating: 8.3/10. Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen Book about the history of YouTube, from its inception to the present day, covering its ups and downs, as well as the controversies it faced. As YouTube exploded in popularity, right now hundreds of hours of videos are uploaded every…
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
Rating: 7.4/10. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do by Judith Rich Harris Book about parenting, arguing for the thesis that parents essentially have no effect on how children turn out. Except in cases of extremely severe abuse, parents have no effect on children, after accounting for factors like genetics. Culture…
Video Making for Beginners by TechEd Publishers
Rating: 6.8/10. A short self-published book about the basics of filmmaking. Before making a film, you need to decide on the story you want to tell, who is the target audience, and what you hope to accomplish with the film. Write an outline first, then progress to a more detailed storyboard and script, making notes…
Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas
Rating: 7.4/10. Fashionopolis: Why What We Wear Matters by Dana Thomas Book about fast fashion and its negative effects. We are used to buying a lot of cheap clothes without thinking too much, but fast fashion has a lot of negative effects on the environment and workers in developing countries. Fashion is very fast-paced and…
Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu
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…
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…