Rating: Don’t Read
The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
by
This is supposed to be some all fired amazing book about randomness. The title is derived from the idea that Europeans thought all swans were black until they visited Australia and suddenly found a black swan. They had no way of knowing that what they thought was true was untrue until confronted by the evidence.…
Decluttered – Jenny Albertini
by
Decluttered is a different book that I imagined it would be. I expected a book about strategies to reduce the clutter in my home, but I got a bunch more discussion about the systems that bring clutter into our homes and the trauma that may have caused these systems as valid coping mechanisms. Albertini has…
Supercharge Your Reading – Maneetpaul Singh
by
This is a short guide showing you how to maximize your reading if you own an e-reader, specifically focusing on the features that come with a Kindle. While there is some good advice here I take exception with his advice on note-taking in books. Singh says that taking notes in a notebook is way too…
More Human – Steve Hilton
by
In More Human former UK government insider attempts to propose a way to make life more suitable to the humans who have to live it instead of the corporations who seemingly dictate so much of the life humans live. While Steve hits some good notes, he also widely misses the mark on many others. Hilton…
Smart Brevity – Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz
by
Smart Brevity is here to teach you how to cater your communication to the over-stimulated worker, and community, of today. There are 4 Core ideas for the writing system presented. The authors really like their bullet points and figure that’s the correct way to do your communication. Their strongest point is that you probably write…
The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu
by
Sure it’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure if it’s the translation or the original writing…I just didn’t like it. The most interesting thing was the protein folding idea for turning things into a super-computer and how it related to the countdown seen in images and retina, but those few pages weren’t enough for…
DevOps with Kubernetes – Stephen Fleming
by
This is a very high-level overview of what DevOps is in the first section and then how Kubernetes works in the second section. While I hoped to glean something from this, it should have been a blog post. At least if it was a blog post the numerous spelling mistakes and grammar issues could have…
Changer – Matt Gemmell
by
While I’ve enjoyed Matt’s writing online on his site, and even a bunch of his short stories, this book didn’t do it for me. In fact, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the book. I made it about 15% in and then the dialogue was so cliche and the scenarios involved so unbelievable that…
The Third Door – Alex Banayan
by
The author supposes that there is a third door you should be taking to success after the main door, and the secondary door fail. Ultimately, this is advice for rich kids that can take as many attempts at success at it takes because they always have money or family support to fall back on. I…
Personal Knowledge Graphs
by
This is a fairly academic look at taking notes and what a personal knowledge graph is. The format of the book is a series of essays, that at times are helpful, but also spend entire chapters on defunct operating systems like Haiku. Yes Haiku runs still, but you’re never going to use it so telling…