Books
I have written about some of these in more depth — the ones with enough in them to write about. I try to extract meaning from every book I read and it obviously doesn’t work out that well, so I figured a better way is to sometimes just appreciate them too.
What follows is roughly how I’d shelve them: the series I grew up on, the science, the fiction, the self-help I mostly tolerated, and the biographies. The tiles are the lists. The cards sitting next to them are the ones that got a page of their own.
The series I grew up on
5 booksWhere it started. I was twelve and these were the whole world.
The Percy Jackson universe
Every single book. Percy Jackson (5), Heroes of Olympus (5), Kane Chronicles (3), Trials of Apollo (5), Magnus Chase (3), Greek Heroes and Gods (2), and a few of the latest releases which I did not like as much (might just be that I am older now).
Geronimo Stilton
Something like 20 of them. I do not remember the names any more, but I can still recall opening my cupboard and finding all of them looking back at me.
Assassin's Creed
Renaissance, Brotherhood, The Secret Crusade (personal favourite, Altair's story) and Revelations, which is where Ezio dies. Read the books before I played the games.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
The whole series, five times over. I was so obsessed I would read this instead of YouTube while eating.
Tom Gates
Bought Excellent Excuses because I thought it would hand me a LIST OF EXCUSES to make. Turned out to be a good buy either way.
Not a tutorial and not a look-at-me flex. A man working out when to lock in, when to barge in, and more importantly when to leave.
Read the write-up →Physics and the universe
4 booksScience books were a good pastime.
A Brief History of Time
Possibly the first science book I bought, and I understood jackshit back then.
Parallel Worlds
Some mind-twisting stuff in there, but I was slowly getting a hang of it.
Brief Answers to the Big Questions
Still a doable read by then, on account of my experience.
Quantum
Introduced me to quantum mechanics like no other book could. I felt like I was living with Bohr.
The private journal of a Roman emperor, never meant for publication. Read it like a novel and you lose the whole of it.
Read the write-up →Maths, systems and computation
3 booksChaos
A beautifully complex book. Took me a while to finish, and even longer to understand what I had just read.
The Joy of X
Thanks to 3b1b, who introduced me to him after an interview. Chill and fun, nothing serious.
The Emperor's New Mind
The one book which sparked my interest in computer science, and everything in it. What a man.
An evil-genius-who-did-good story. Self-made with Woz's help, manipulative, and extremely good at selling. I read it during a turn in my own life.
Read the write-up →Minds and how they work
3 booksMoonwalking with Einstein
Skeptical about the name at first, but it is a good and a new idea, which I still could not bring to fruition.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Who hasn't read this. The real question is whether you use anchoring in your own life. If not, do it. It's awesome.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Fuck up, but own it, and recover. The man really liked to live.
The wizard who read all the documentation. Laying out memory addresses and writing the firmware by hand, before anyone could come and help you.
Read the write-up →Us, as a species
3 booksSapiens
A nice and long history of everything we have done right and wrong. I love how blunt he is.
Homo Deus
Some good ideas. By this time I had learnt enough to have opinions of my own and challenge some of his.
The Selfish Gene
My first book on evolutionary biology, and boy was it done right.
How CRISPR came to be, and how Doudna got there. Also the uncomfortable question of doing what the community calls unethical, when it benefits everyone.
Read the write-up →The Russians
4 booksStories I have absolutely cherished.
White Nights
What a love. I had no words. The neglect hurt more than the fact that he meant nothing.
Crime and Punishment
Classic classic. Betrayed himself for nothing, which I think is the theme of most of his novels.
The Brothers Karamazov unfinished
Let's see what this one brings up. The ideas of self-deception are clear here as well. As I said...
Anna Karenina
Another melodrama, and it reminded me of Malena. Completely unrelated films, but I always pictured her.
PSDs: poor, smart, with a deep desire to be someone. A raw account of a man who never stopped walking the walk.
Read the write-up →Absurdism and the uncomfortable ones
5 booksThe Trial
Haunting. Led me into a deeper study of absurdism and kafkaesque writing. Any screenplay I have thought of since has had this element in it.
The Metamorphosis
Another one of Kafka's you-cannot-control-it-you-will-die novels.
The Plague
A thoughtful tale, though I did not know how to feel after reading it. It leaves you blank, but you are still glad the town is safe.
The Stranger
One of the weirdest books I have read, and I have never hated a protagonist this much. Even from an atheist's perspective I do not sympathise with his philosophy.
Animal Farm
I knew what to expect. It's hard to escape the logic he presented, and that is roughly where we are at this point.
It looks like another master-your-mind book and it isn't. It's a story book, his own, and you learn a lot about a man from the way he describes his worst moments.
Read the write-up →Lives, ordinary and otherwise
5 booksThe Alchemist
Avoided this one for years for absolutely no reason. Glad I came through, because it genuinely is one of the most moving books out there.
A House for Mr Biswas
Never thought I would enjoy the melodrama, but here we are, because the setting and the plot are so simple and yet so elegant.
The Kite Runner
More raw and emotional than most other stories. A simple plot expressed nicely, though nothing too over the top.
The Count of Monte Cristo
Hope and wait. A story where no character is morally good or evil, only selfish.
Dhalgren unfinished
The one novel I still can't finish. That's all you need to know about this.
More about dealing with pressure than about glory. He travelled the world with nothing in his pockets, looking for whatever it was he was seeking.
Read the write-up →Self-help and money
4 booksI didn't really enjoy these much. I read them because my dad had a bunch of them in the house.
Think Again
About the need to rethink old ideas and old ways of thinking. I always took it as a message to break conformity and think for yourself.
Atomic Habits
Who hasn't read it. Reminiscent of that Admiral McRaven speech at the University of Texas. Some ideas were nice, like the ones for removing distractions.
The Psychology of Money
Not really self-help I guess, but I do not remember a thing from it. Besides, all of it seems like a part of The Intelligent Investor.
The Intelligent Investor
How could I not. The OG self-help book. Reading this, I started my investing journey, with the help of my dad of course.
Biographies, in one line
2 booksNot all of them need a whole page. Some I can say in a line.
Masters of Doom
Gave some excellent perspective on how smart Carmack really was, and why the two Johns were the equivalent of the two Steves.
That Will Never Work
A book about ideas, and about accepting when you are not the right person for one, then finding the right thing to do instead. Honestly a light read.