Insanely Simple

Going in, I wasn't expecting much. I had looked to Jobs's biography for descriptions of how he worked. However, I was surprised to find way more about that in this book. The author arugues that complexity is a force that is always trying to grow and spread and that a champion for simplicity must be constantly fighting to keep it at bay. Jobs was that champion for Apple. He never cared how muh it cost to maintain this simplicity. Loved the stories about meetings where he would be absolutely frank with people about their work. I like how the author attempted to provide practical steps to fight for simplicity. I don't know if I agreed with them all, but I do agree you have to fight simplicity if you want it. Or else, as they say, entropy wins again!

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The Hobbit reread

I hadn't read this guy since third grade. I figured it was time to refresh before the movie came out. What can I say, it's fun!

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Thinking Fast and Slow

Such a long book. The author takes us through just how terrible we can be at thinking. He proposes a model for the brain where its broken into two systems. The first one is really good at snap judgements but can fall prey to so many issues. The second one is much less reactive but able to understand not only the information that's present, but what's missing. He then goes through the common pitfalls of human thinking. It's all quite fascinating and I wish I had cheat sheet to study all of them. A few notes, Humans are lazy. That is, they avoid doing the hard work of thinking if at all possible. We try to think with system I as much possible. System II to engaged only if necessary. Humans like to create stories. That is, if details are missing in a story we like to create a story that fits regardless of whather it's based on fact. I liked how he would end chapters with example phrases that would demonstrate how to recognize and avoid the pitfalls. What I got tired of, really quickly, is him telling stories about how he discovered all these insights into thinking. He tells the stories in a pattern like, "here I was trying to figure it out, and I proved everybody wrong, again, because I'm right!" I almost put the book down because of that.~

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Sourcery

Read this guy just to see a bit more Mr. Vetinari, sadly, he spends most of the book as a lizard in a jar. The story itself was ok, nothing to write home about.

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The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution

The author serves up quotes from documents written around the time of the ratification of the constitution. His argument is that the founding fathers wanted a government that gave much more power to individual states. I think I often disagreed with the author. His argument often was phrased as "despite how the founders wrote it, the majority of the founding fahers really meant something else." While he does provide quotes, I find it hard to believe that the opponents of the Constitution could be soothed by the proponents saying, "no that's not what we meant, we meant the opposite." In general it was fascianating to here the message they wrote back then. It was also fascinating the founding fathers were so well educated and able to create an impressive government without the use of Wikipedia. I propose the news media should quote the constitution more often.

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River Of Gods

A sci-fi novel set in India? Sign me up! In fact, when this book was released, I ordered it from the only place it was published, the UK. However, I never got around to reading it. It recently hit Audible, so I started on it. Sadly, I could not get into it, at all. The author throws in quite a bit of color and phrases from India, but it all seems a little forced. Plus he starts out with so many storylines and characters that I don't know which ones to care about. It's a long book, but I decided to put it down. Nothing about it was particularly intriguing, and I decided it was too long to gamble on it picking up.

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Mindless Eating

I thought I knew most of what would be discussed in this book. This was mostly true. Some his expermients have been quoted by quite a few other books on the topic of food psychology. However, it was still nice to hear details from the source. I also had no idea about this "Spice Box" restauant. I'll have to checked it out sometime. The author seems fairly smug throughout the whole book, which I found annoying. I also thought it was a little unfair that all of his experiments where he was able to prove that people mindlessly ate more, involved eating carbs. I think his experimental design would be perfect to split test mindless eating of fats vs. carbs. I'm curious how much he would advocate trying to fool yourself into eating less, than into changing the proportions of macronutrients in your diet.

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What Einstein Told His Cook

Such a useful book. The author takes science and applies it to cornucopia of issues that arise in the kitchen. For examples he explains why "sea salt" is an meaningless designation. He explains how microwave ovens work. Not just the theoretical science, but the practical as well. Microwaves only penetrate the first inch of food, that's why foods get cooked on the outside, but remain frozen inside. The only detraactor from the book is that it seems written with slightly patronizing tone.

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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Guy Ritchie films inspired me to investigate the original source materials. I must say I definitely enjoyed the stories. I think the mysteries were each a good length and very unique. After having been introduced to some of these characters, I re-watched the films and saw plenty of references to the original source material. Good stuff!

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The Dip

Godin argues, succicntly, that when forging a path you need to recognize when perservering will result in success and when quitting will let you move on. I don't think this book resonated with me.

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