⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Norwegian Wood by Murakami
| Full Title | Norwegian Wood |
|---|---|
| Authors | Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin |
| Year Published | 2000 |
| Date Read | August 03, 2024 |
| Rating | 5/5 stars |
Beautifully written. As someone who has rarely engaged with fiction in the past (perhaps the only authors I’ve read 3+ books from are JK Rowling and Bukowski), I feel I don’t yet have a good handle on what aspects of a novel contribute to my enjoyment of it. But pretty quickly, I found myself coming back to the book to see how its main character’s feelings for the women in his life would develop. Would recommend.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Man Who Solved the Market by Zuckerman
| Full Title | The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gregory Zuckerman |
| Year Published | 2019 |
| Date Read | July 23, 2024 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
Not a bad read. Great to hear about the full history, and how much of it was things mostly-not-working or working-but-not-super-well. As I read more of these biographical books, this arc becomes less surprising as it shows up again and again. Perhaps some of it is that a story wouldn’t be all that interesting if everything went awesome throughout. But I think less cynically, I take away that the struggle for success is something that has many twists and turns before arriving at the destination.
⭐⭐⭐ The Grid by Bakke
| Full Title | The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gretchen Bakke |
| Year Published | 2016 |
| Date Read | June 12, 2024 |
| Rating | 3/5 stars |
A little weak. Was definitely interesting to read about the similarity in differing standards (as with railroads) eventually converging on the (quasi-)nation-wide grid that we have today, and just how much the monopoly status was intertwined with government regulation sought after by the companies themselves. Still, it didn’t hold my attention enough to get past about a third.
⭐⭐⭐ The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1) by Cixin
| Full Title | The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1) |
|---|---|
| Authors | Liu Cixin, Ken Liu |
| Year Published | 2014 |
| Date Read | May 13, 2024 |
| Rating | 3/5 stars |
Poslechl jsem si tak třetinu v Češtině, po té, co jsem se podíval na sérii na Netflixu. Byl jsem mile překvapen, jak blízko pořad je k tomu, co je v knížce. Ale tohle pořadí (první televize, potom kniha) si myslím, že nefunguje dobře. Příště to udělám naopak.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Number Go Up by Faux
| Full Title | Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall |
|---|---|
| Authors | Zeke Faux |
| Year Published | 2023 |
| Date Read | May 12, 2024 |
| Rating | 4/5 stars |
Pretty happy with this one. Really enjoyed having the author give a bit more background on how he was trying to investigate the story; came away with the impression that this sort of journalism is actually fairly adventurous and ill-defined in terms of what exactly you should do to succeed. The book also gets props for avoiding being as unreasonably effusive as Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon. One thing that the book argues for, which I haven’t really thought of previously, is that since so much of the crypto market is used for shady / questionable things, people don’t really care if the “fundamentals” are really what they are represented to be. Of course, if we get overhyped, things have to crash, but there’s always going to be demand from pig butchering, drug dealing, human trafficking, etc. that will provide a floor for Tether et. al.
Would recommend to those with even a passing interest in crypto.
⭐⭐ Atomic Habits by Clear
| Full Title | Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Clear |
| Year Published | 2018 |
| Date Read | April 19, 2024 |
| Rating | 2/5 stars |
Read in the Czech translation. A collection of a bunch of stuff that’s been out there for a while — feels like more of a amalgamation of a bunch of his blog posts rather than anything too new. Probably decent for folks both new to the area and interested in it, but not too useful otherwise.