⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Red Plenty by Spufford
| Full Title | Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties’ Soviet Dream |
|---|---|
| Authors | Francis Spufford |
| Year Published | 2010 |
| Date Read | August 20, 2018 |
| Rating | 5/5 stars |
I saw this book recommended in a comment on Hacker News, and originally decided to pick it up because I wanted to get a more emotional telling of this era, primarily to give me context to the stories of parents’ own experiences with communism in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s-1990s. I was surprised at how much I liked the book.
Primarily, I was surprised that I hadn’t seen this format of storytelling before - obviously there are plenty of strict fiction / non-fiction books, and a solid amount of books that fall in the fuzzy middle of ‘based on true events.’ But I haven’t seen any books in that last category that both try to tell an interesting story for the reader and also provide footnotes at the end that explain, in detail, what liberties the author has taken to make the narrative more interesting. This I think is the biggest factor in my enjoyment of the book.
The actual content was also handled in a pleasing way. Spufford creates a few parallel stories that
he comes back to during different sections of the book. Some are only one-off. The way that the stories are organized, however, allows the author to leave the narrative of one setting and come back to it much further in the future, transporting the reader to when something interesting is happening. In a normal fiction book you wouldn’t need to do this (since you can just arbitrarily have events happen in a way that is fortuitous to storytelling), but in this kind of book it’s important for the reader that the dates match the chronology in real-life time. I thought this particular way of handling the necessary time discontinuity / event discontinuity was well done.
Overall, I’d recommend Red Plenty to anyone wanting to get a better feel of the Soviet promise. I came away from it largely succeeding in my goal.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ McNamara’s Folly by Gregory
| Full Title | McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hamilton Gregory |
| Year Published | 2015 |
| Date Read | May 22, 2018 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
Sometimes it is easy to get caught in a bubble of where you work and the people you hang out with. Books like these are nice, since they provide context and make you understand the world on a more holistic level. Most surprising were that the new minimum IQ qualifications for military service didn’t seem that low to me - whereas before, the military required a score in the 31st percentile, it was lowered as part of Project 100,000 down to the 10th percentile. Although the author goes into the fact that a large number of recruits were let in through ‘administrative acceptance’ (and actually had scores even lower) - it was still surprising to me how stark a contrast there was in 31 vs 10.
I would only give 3.5 stars, however, because the second part of the book becomes repetitive very quickly and probably isn’t worth a read. The author chooses to go into stories of individuals, without ever focusing on anyone for more than a few paragraphs. This makes it hard to connect with
those described and results in what feels like a mass of stories haphazardly smashed together.
Overall would recommend reading, but only the first half (parts 1-3). The author does a good job of defining any military concepts or slang, which is nice for readers that don’t have previous familiarity.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Modern Romance by Ansari
| Full Title | Modern Romance |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aziz Ansari, Eric Klinenberg |
| Year Published | 2015 |
| Date Read | May 06, 2018 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
Very much enjoyed listening to this; I imagine reading it wouldn’t be quite as full of an experience, since Aziz’s voice is so distinctive and gave me a much more intimate relationship with the book than I’m used to. Ansari does a good job of blending in jokes with more serious subject manner, sort of like Oliver’s Last Week Tonight (but way better). The historical framing of romance was interesting but the parts most valuable to me were narratives of those currently dealing with the frustrations of dating, on which the book spends most of its time. Would recommend a listen.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Lean Startup by Ries
| Full Title | The Lean Startup |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eric Ries |
| Year Published | 2011 |
| Date Read | April 15, 2018 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
Late to the game on this one but I still thought the book had good ideas that haven’t been fully integrated in the startup scene. I found a few parallels with this book and The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win with regards to how it looks at software development from the angle of lean manufacturing. Keeping work-in-progress low and getting fast feedback on new products are intuitively explained.
⭐⭐ A Dead Bat In Paraguay by V.
| Full Title | A Dead Bat In Paraguay: One Man’s Peculiar Journey Through South America |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roosh V. |
| Year Published | 2009 |
| Date Read | March 09, 2018 |
| Rating | 2/5 stars |
Throughout most of this book, the author is focused on how he can get laid in the South American city he’s currently in. It struck me as peculiar that all the other experiences he had - be it getting a feel of the culture, learning a foreign language, appreciating nature, or experiences with other male travelers - were so secondary to his focus on hooking up that they are basically just footnotes. I appreciated how honest the narrator seemed in his retelling of the events, but perhaps I disliked the book because I can’t really understand why someone would think that hopping around a whole continent would be worth it just to try to get in bed with locals.
⭐⭐⭐ Powerful by McCord
| Full Title | Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patty McCord |
| Year Published | 2018 |
| Date Read | March 08, 2018 |
| Rating | 3/5 stars |
Pretty good listen. A large part of this book expands on the existing Netflix culture deck; you can probably get ~60% of the value just by reading that. Still, it’s nice to get more context behind some of the opinions expressed in the slides.