To prevent myself from going illiterate, I’ll ocassionally read a book.

Book Queue

  • Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Power of Myth Joseph Campbell

Finished

  • I’m Glad My Mom Died Jennette McCurdy
    • emotional rollercoaster and page turner. As someone who tries their best to see both sides, I was shocked when I too, was glad McCurdy’s mom died. Highly recommend.
  • Build Tony Fadell
    • pretty good. my 3 takeaways:
      • Tony Fadell also deserves a lot of credit for helping to bring about the iPod
      • Tony founded Nest (the thermostat company), and tried really hard to make their products user-friendly. One of their clever ideas was to gift a free screwdriver with nest orders so customers didn’t have to go rummage in their toolbox for one. it also doubled as free marketing/goodwill if the customer ended up using that screwdriver again in the future for other purposes.
      • Another clever idea was how Nest was able to deal with the legal requirement for all appliances with power cables to come with a sticker with a baby choking on it. Tony hated that they would need to associate something so terrifying with a Nest product and insisted they had to remove it to Nest’s lawyer with no success. Eventually they came up with a clever solution which was to actually enlarge the sticker as much as possible to make it easier to remove since they figured everyone cuts those off immediately anyway.
  • Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
    • very good. Even years later, I still remember many scenes because of how deeply the written emotions cut into me.
  • East of Eden John Steinbeck
    • very good. Probably the best ever cautionary tale for parents to treat ALL their kids nicely.
  • Counting by 7s Holly Goldberg Sloan
    • very good. short read too. Would recommend for precocious middle schoolers who might be able to see themselves in the main character.
  • How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia Mohsin Hamid
    • pretty good. Well written, and concepts would be interesting for anyone who hasn’t realized how much luck is involved in becoming rich yet. Yes, yes it’s hard work, but there’s a lot of luck too.
  • The Name of the Wind Patrick Rothfuss
    • pretty good, but I’m not super stirred to read the sequel. Lacked strong emotional beats for me so I didn’t ever care much for the protagonist.
  • Socialism Seriously Danny Katch
    • I was a capitalist until I read this and it successfully changed my mind to be more socialist. I think way more people (especially conservative voters) should read this and may realize they are closet socialists.
  • Death’s End Cixin Liu
  • The Dark Forest Cixin Liu
  • The Three-Body Problem Cixin Liu
    • the entire series is very good. highly recommend. The writing and translation is masterful so the descriptions are crazy vivid. There are many points in the story where you cannot stop reading because you are wondering how the heck are the good guys going to pull themselves out of this mess, and you literally cannot think of anything, but then the protagonist figures it out and the author reveals it and you go WOW. Also, Obama (yes that Obama) read it and liked it.
  • A Stitch of Time Lauren Marks
    • very good. The author opens a window into how she was able to recover from an aneurysm that took away her ability to remember how to use language. How are you not intrigued?