⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Difficult Conversations by Stone
| Full Title | Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most |
|---|---|
| Authors | Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Roger Fisher |
| Year Published | 2000 |
| Date Read | November 07, 2021 |
| Rating | 5/5 stars |
Really great book, I ended up listening to it twice back-to-back. The framing of considering each party’s “contribution” to a problem is a really nice way of capturing the fact that in almost all disagreements, both individuals bear at least some responsibility for the current state of affairs (though, make sure not to see this as “blame”). I thought it was a great insight to mention that not all difficult conversations should actually happen — even opening such a conversation should come only after one has seriously considered if it is worth it. It’s also useful to be reminded of the presence of your own perception of your identity significantly impacting how you behave in such discussions.
While difficult conversations will never be easy, I found that this book presented a useful framework that would help them result in productive outcomes more frequently. Would recommend as a listen or a read.
⭐⭐ When Breath Becomes Air by Kalanithi
| Full Title | When Breath Becomes Air |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese |
| Year Published | 2016 |
| Date Read | September 13, 2021 |
| Rating | 2/5 stars |
Honest writing that is useful as a reminder that life is fragile, but I’m afraid I didn’t find much else here.
⭐⭐ Red Roulette by Shum
| Full Title | Red Roulette: An Insider’s Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today’s China |
|---|---|
| Authors | Desmond Shum, Tim Chiou |
| Year Published | 2021 |
| Date Read | September 12, 2021 |
| Rating | 2/5 stars |
I first heard of this book via articles about how Whitney Duan, the author’s ex-wife, called Shum to urge him not to publish the book. According to reports, it was the first he’d heard from her since she ‘vanished’ in 2017. Based on that, as well as the subtitle of the book itself, I was expecting something akin to Browder’s Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.
Overall though, I came away disappointed. The book spent an inordinate amount of time on background, which to me seemed included more out of completeness of an autobiography rather than due to an assessment by the writer that readers would actually enjoy or be interested in those sections. It also rubbed me the wrong way that the author and his wife were explicitly working within the system to get ahead themselves, not attempting to create some
change. The contrast between that behavior and the usage of the quote “better to speak out and die than keep silent and live” in the epigraph is certainly peculiar to me. Perhaps if I had been patient this would have eventually materialized, but I saw none in the first 4 hours / 43% of the book.
Would recommend to those who are specifically interested in the author’s life, and perhaps to those that have some personal attachment to China. Have a hard time recommending to anyone else.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Moveable Feast by Hemingway
| Full Title | A Moveable Feast |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ernest Hemingway, James Naughton |
| Year Published | 2012 |
| Date Read | September 07, 2021 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
Travel-journal style of writing, similar to The Sun Also Rises but perhaps a bit less polished. Really easy to pick up and drop right back into the story, even with an appreciable amount of time between readings.
⭐⭐ The Organized Mind by Levitin
| Full Title | The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel J. Levitin |
| Year Published | 2014 |
| Date Read | August 27, 2021 |
| Rating | 2/5 stars |
Listened to a little over 4.5 hours, about 28%. Ultimately I think I may have simply come across many of the topics Levitin covers in other resources in this area, which isn’t the book’s fault. However, I thought that the pacing was too slow; the author made the all-too-common mistake you see in productivity nonfiction by spending way too long on individual points. There is significant volume to get through per individual insight, which is a bummer.
Still, there are some good concepts to be reminded of here. I liked the author’s metaphor for how keeping things in your head that you know you have to do is akin to having a disorganized room; capturing these tasks in an external system is similar to cleaning up your work area. He also introduces an interesting way of viewing ‘assistants’ — just like now we have many external digital systems (apps for note-taking, events, tasks etc.) that are extensions to our cognition, people employed as personal assistants can be thought of
in the same way. In both cases, we are trying to externalize tasks at low levels of abstraction to free up mental space for higher-level ones. What I didn’t really think about is that the amount of assistance we get as individuals from other humans has actually radically gone down in the last few decades — whereas before we’d have travel agents to help with booking hotels and flights or operators to connect us to the right phone call destination, we now have to do this ourselves (typically, with software as the replacement). Clearly this has democratized access to these services and proved to be very profitable for the software companies that produce such applications. But are these tools actually better than what they are replacing? Or even, how much better could things be if you hired specialists that could also make use of these tools today? I class these kinds of questions into the “paying for advice” area, which I would still like to explore more.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Range by Epstein
| Full Title | Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Epstein |
| Year Published | 2019 |
| Date Read | August 19, 2021 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
This ended up being a pretty great read. There was a little section on some of the latest research in memory that focused on active recall / distributed practice, and as a big believer in that stuff perhaps it’s no surprise I’m a fan of the book overall too (more reading on this can be found in Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning for those interested). Another memorable section for me was where Epstein discusses the Flynn effect and links it to our significantly-increased ability to think abstractly versus our parents and grandparents. What was crazy to hear was some research from pre-industrialization / collectivization Russian farmers and their inability to put even familiar items into categories. Some related stuff in here about their apparent lack of curiosity also being limited by their extremely literal understanding of life. Would love to read some more about this as I think it may partly explain why it has always felt to me like those very advanced in
age seem fairly set in their ways and uninterested in learning new things. It brings to mind interesting thoughts on how my own mind might start to harden over time, and what I could do to avoid the same fate.
Generally, the author did a good job of convincing me that if your goal is creative output and breakthrough results, taking a wide view as opposed to an expert one is likely to be fruitful. As someone who works in a creative field and has aspirations to introduce more creativity into my hobbies as well, it felt timely. Would generally recommend to anyone interested in non-fiction reading as there’s appreciable wheat for fairly low chaff here.