⭐⭐⭐ Dapper, a Large-Scale Distributed Systems Tracing Infrastructure by Sigelman
| Full Title | Dapper, a Large-Scale Distributed Systems Tracing Infrastructure |
|---|---|
| Authors | Benjamin H. Sigelman, Luiz André Barroso, Mike Burrows, Pat Stephenson, Manoj Plakal, Donald Beaver, Saul Jaspan, Chandan Shanbhag |
| Year Published | |
| Date Read | May 01, 2019 |
| Rating | 3/5 stars |
Solid paper. Explains the architecture clearly and goes into some cool use cases. However, for many usage examples the explanation is far too shallow, which limits learnings readers can take away.
⭐ The Hundred-Year Marathon by Pillsbury
| Full Title | The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Pillsbury |
| Year Published | 2015 |
| Date Read | April 01, 2019 |
| Rating | 1/5 stars |
Listened to about 2 hours of this. There are two key problems with the book.
The first is that it seems like almost all of the content depends on just one source, the author. There are a bunch of red flags in the text that point to this, like the conspiratorial language that’s used, the author’s insistence that other China experts don’t understand Chinese nearly as well as he does (and so should be ignored), or claims that others have been successfully ‘duped’ by China’s public statements but that Pillsbury has spoken to former USSR operatives and knows what’s really going on. Having a single source doesn’t always mean a book is problematic; philosophical or autobiographical texts tend to have this same attribute and can work fine. But when you make a bunch of claims about a nation of over a billion people based on only personal experience and a claimed better understanding of Mandarin, I think it’s fair to cry foul.
The second deals with the thesis of the book.
Throughout the beginning chapters, Pillsbury keeps talking about how China wants to overtake the US, how they’re not OK playing second-fiddle, how China has tried to deceive the US into thinking they don’t have world leader ambitions, etc. The language and tone in which the author presents these ideas is meant to evoke fear, concern, and surprise on the side of the reader. But this is totally unsurprising to me: wouldn’t it make sense that China intends to be #1, especially when it has the greatest population? Becoming the world’s leading power is a very reasonable long-term goal for any nation-state. Pillsbury’s presentation is akin a basketball coach telling his players things like “the other team wants to beat us!” and “you don’t get it, they want to be the champions, they’re not OK taking second place!” I think most people would be confused that the coach would think players need to be reminded of this key attribute of any competition.
Not recommended.
⭐ “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” by Feynman
| Full Title | “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character |
|---|---|
| Authors | Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings |
| Year Published | 2018 |
| Date Read | March 30, 2019 |
| Rating | 1/5 stars |
Was only able to listen to this for an hour. You have to be pretty egotistical to put out a book with a title (and subtitle) like this, and the content shows. Feynman walks a very fine line between “here’s a funny/interesting story” and “here’s a story that makes me look good,” and I found that often he strays too far into the latter category. One specific example is how he tends to use verbs like “discovered” or “invented” when talking about his ‘exploits’: for things that are neither new discoveries nor new inventions. This comes off as intellectually dishonest to me, and results in a very irritating reading experience. Other stories don’t suffer from this annoyance but end up simply being uninteresting, which isn’t much better.
Overall, I felt the book was published mainly to further the myth of Feynman. It might be a fun read for those with a physics background, but I wouldn’t consider recommending it to anyone else.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Getting to Yes by Fisher
| Full Title | Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton |
| Year Published | 1992 |
| Date Read | March 28, 2019 |
| Rating | 5/5 stars |
What a great book. In just 6 hours, Fisher and Ury introduced multiple unique concepts that really changed the way I see negotiations — the ones that stuck out were BATNA, interests over positions, and focusing on objective truths/criteria. The authors also provide realistic examples of how using their advice might unlock better results. In these examples, following the Getting to Yes approach resulted in far more potential solutions being explored, often times by integrating options that didn’t initially seem like they could be part of the negotiation.
As the authors note, people negotiate on a daily basis: situations that need more than one person to accomplish a goal usually require some kind of negotiation. I highly recommend reading this book to improve the results of those negotiations.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Being Mortal by Gawande
| Full Title | Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End |
|---|---|
| Authors | Atul Gawande |
| Year Published | 2014 |
| Date Read | March 19, 2019 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
It took me 2-3 hours to really get into the book, but in the end I enjoyed it primarily because it made me think about issues I never before examined. What I took away from Gawande’s discussion of the last months/weeks of our lives is that communication is key. The common thread that ran through all of the poor outcomes for people near death had to do with a failure by someone to have a difficult discussion — that could be the aged individual themselves, their relatives and loved ones, or perhaps the doctors/nurses in charge of care. Usually it was a combination. But when people were willing to confront reality and examine what future they desired when life neared the end, the outcomes were far better.
I am grateful that I stumbled upon this before I was thrust into a situation where I would need the information. As Gawande writes, if you don’t plan for eventualities at least a little in advance, your outcomes are likely to be much worse than if you had put even minimal
effort in up front. This book is something I hope I will remember to come back to and re-read when I feel the information might be needed soon.
Below, I reproduce 5 questions Gawande encourages those with serious illness answer for themselves. Ideally, you will share this with those providing care as well as those that may be making life/death decisions for you if you become unable to do so yourself.
1. What is your understanding of where you are and of your illness?
2. What are your fears or worries for the future?
3. What are your goals and priorities?
4. What outcomes are unacceptable to you? What are you willing to sacrifice and not?
5. (later) What would a good day look like?
⭐ The Courage to be Disliked by Kishimi
| Full Title | The Courage to be Disliked |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga |
| Year Published | 2017 |
| Date Read | March 08, 2019 |
| Rating | 1/5 stars |
Listened to the first hour of the Audible version just couldn’t get past the voice actor they chose as the ‘youth’ as well as the general tone of the writing. I don’t mind books structured around the Socratic dialogue, but I do mind the implementation this book chose where the argument seems fairly acrimonious and not at all truth-seeking (“I’m going to prove him wrong and make him kneel before me”? I mean, c’mon).
I also found the youth to be inconsistently ‘stupid’ — at times, he misses obvious implications that the philosopher must then painstakingly explain, but in others provides incisive questions that move the discussion forward. This I think is primarily due to bad writing, because I haven’t had the same experience with Socratic dialogue books.