Rating: 9.5/10. Intro book on ethics — it’s not an easy read (took me about 6 months to finish it) but it contains a lot of deep ideas in 300 pages. The book is divided into three parts: what is the goal in life, how to do the right thing, and what is the status…
All Book Reviews
My Warren Buffet Bible by Robert Bloch
Rating: 6.8/10. A bunch of quotes by famous investor Warren Buffett about principles of investing. They follow a few basic motifs, like invest based on fundamental long-term value, avoid speculation, keep control of your emotions. [redacted] got this from the bookstore and I decided to read it too. Most of the advice is trivially true…
How Your Brain Works by New Scientist
Rating: 6.3/10. A fairly short book (200 pages) by a team of neuroscientists that covers various aspects of neuroscience like memory, intelligence, emotion, perception. The subject should be very interesting but the book was a dull read, it basically gave a bunch of facts and lacked character, with no attempt to string them together in…
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
Rating: 7.7/10. This book gives a comprehensive scientific overview of sleep. Although there are still many unanswered questions, there’s been a lot of research lately and this book sums it up. Sleep is a very necessary function of life. Every living organism requires it, although in different amounts, and total lack of sleep very quickly…
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Rating: 7.4/10. [WARNING: SPOILERS!] Second book I read by Agatha Christie, it was okay but I liked the first one better (And Then There Were None). In this mystery, detective Hercule Poirot is on a train in Eastern Europe when one of the passengers is murdered, and also the train gets stuck in a snowbank…
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Rating: 8.2/10. I read this Dostoyevsky book as a recommendation from [redacted] because it’s partially about a man who tries to rescue a prostitute. It turns out that the rescuing prostitute part is not really the central event of the book, but nevertheless I found it quite interesting. The novella is short enough (90 pages)…
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
Rating: 4.5/10. A classic book by astronomer Carl Sagan about how to distinguish science from pseudoscience. The beginning is really interesting and talks about a man who seems well-read, but his knowledge is completely wrong. Stuff like aliens, UFOs, ghosts, Atlantis, crop circles, other supernatural stuff. The book proceeds to debunk all of these in…
Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Rating: 8.4/10. This book was written by Hans Rosling (the same guy that made The Joy of Stats documentary) just before he died in 2017. [redacted] recommended it to me. It uses stats to show that despite what the media portrays, and despite popular conception, the world is not such a bad place. Extreme poverty…
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rating: 8.5/10. [WARNING: SPOILERS!] This is the first mystery novel and Agatha Christie novel that I’ve read, and it also happens to be the bestselling title in the entire mystery genre of all time. Ten strangers are invited to a fancy party on an island, and then, one by one, they start dying, and they…
Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Rating: 5.7/10. This is the third Taleb book that I’ve read, and it was recommended by [redacted]. I’m disappointed in this book, and felt it was downhill from Black Swan, then to Antifragile, then this book. Compared to the previous two books, it’s a lot less structured, and he kind of throws out a mix…
Sky Burial by Xinran Xue
Rating: 8.7/10. [WARNING: SPOILERS!] In this novel, a Chinese women, Shu Wen from Suzhou, travels to Tibet to search for her missing husband. This was in 1958, when the Chinese Communist Party annexed Tibet. On the way there, she picks up a Tibetan woman, Zhuoma. They get into some trouble in the mountains and meet…
Getting to Yes by Fisher, Ury, and Patton
Rating: 8.5/10. This book tells you how to negotiate more effectively. A common negotiating mistake is to use positional negotiation, which is each side picking an arbitrary position (eg: buy the car for $5000), and going back and forth until you’re tired and agree, or you both walk out. Positional negotiation is highly arbitrary, and…