My Reading List
June 2015
“Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.” — Charlie Munger
A while ago I began tracking the books I’m reading with the help of Goodreads. With these monthly posts I want to share what I read the previous month. Mainly books, but sometimes I’ll link to interesting essays as well. Here’s what I read in June:
books
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
I wasn’t too familiar with the life of Warren Buffett before reading this biography. I’m glad I read it. He’s a fascinating man. While Alice Schroeder sometimes describes his family history in too much detail, it’s the only book out there that gives us such a profound story of a living legend.
“Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster. That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The trouble with love is that you can’t buy it. You can buy sex. You can buy testimonial dinners. You can buy pamphlets that say how wonderful you are. But the only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: I’ll buy a million dollars’ worth of love. But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.”
I read a lot of business/management books, but this is now one of my favorites. Collins and his team of researchers studied companies that made or didn’t make the transition from a good to a great company. The concepts he represents are not exactly what you might expect which makes this book and its findings even more interesting.
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
One of the best books I ever read and I honestly think everyone should read it at least once. This book will change your perspective on war.
“But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”
“Rich Dad, Poor Dad” is on so many must-read lists that I finally got a copy. Honestly, I found it quite dissapointing. While Kiyosaki’s take on education and financing is interesting, the book is full of repetitive advice and lacking in-depth information. The beginning in which he describes his upbringing with two different influences — his rich dad and his poor dad — is inspiring. However the rest of the book just wasn’t for me.
“In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.”
The Ultimate Guide to Remote Working: How to Grow, Manage and Work with Remote Teams by Wade Foster (free)
We used to have two offices. However since earlier this year we are a fully distributed team. Everyone works remote now — mostly from home. Our decision to get rid of our offices was mostly based on the freedom of hiring the best people, as well as working from where each of us feels the most productive. 2/3 of our team has kids and they really enjoy working from home. Not missing out on seeing their kids grow up.
Even so there are many pros that come with remote work, it can also be quite challenging. How do you onboard new hires, build a company culture, communicate effectively etc.
This guide by the Zapier team is trying to answer most of these questions. It’s a useful guide for everyone running or working in a remote team including many examples and interviews from companies such as GitHub, Treehouse and Buffer.
“It’s highly unlikely you could pluck any random set of people, at any random moment in history, dispersed around the globe, put them together and expect them to build something amazing. We’ve found there are three important ingredients to making re- mote work, well, work: Team, Tools, and Process.”
Was ich noch sagen wollte by Helmut Schmidt (in German)
This book by former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt is currently only available in German. Schmidt pursues the question if we still need role models today and writes about the once he had in his long career in politics. It’s a very personal book and a nice retrospect of Germany’s political history since World War II.
essays
From all the content I read online this June, these two really stood out and are well worth a read:
It all started with Bloomberg offering Paul Ford the chance to give him a whole magazine to write about programming. Ford got to work and produced an impressive 38,000-word essay with great graphics and interactive elements. Some even call it art. It’s definitely the best essay I’ve ever read about computer programming and I highly recommend it wether you work in the industry or not (even better).
“The turn-of-last-century British artist William Morris once said you can’t have art without resistance in the materials. The computer and its multifarious peripherals are the materials. The code is the art.”
The Journey by Patrick Kingsley
It’s in the news, daily: refugees risking their lives to come to Europe. Thousands loose their life on this dangerous trip. This interactive essay describes the journey of Syrian refugee Hashem Alsouki who’s trying to make his way to Sweden and find freedom for his family. With documenting Hashem’s journey Guardian Journalist Patrick Kingsley gives the thousands of refugees crossing the Mediterranean a face.
“I don’t have many heroes, but Hashem is definitely one of them. I’m honoured to have got the chance to tell his story, and I hope it shines a light on the travails of not just Hashem, but the thousands of other refugees crossing the Mediterranean this year in search of a better life.”
What did you read last month? Let me know on Twitter!
