Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know, Difficult Conversations, Law School for Everyone: Corporate Law, Defiant, Germination

Voytek Pituła

·

Follow

Published in

VP of Books

·

2 min read

·

Dec 30, 2023

--

Listen

Share

Non-fiction:

• Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (3/4) — Semi-interesting view on dimensions. I liked it as an opportunity to read a novella from the 19th century. And I liked it as a spatial imagination exercise. And it’s short. On the downside, it’s not very profound, and its content has already been integrated into popular culture (or sci-fi). So it’s not really revolutionary. Rather difficult to grasp with audio only. (Technically it’s fiction but only to the extent needed to convey the idea)
• Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know (3/4) — Why we need banks, especially central ones. How inflation works. How it’s connected to interest rates and how central banks control it. Why “too big to fail” is a great danger to any system. You can learn all of that and more from this book. The Great Courses delivered a really good book once again.
• Difficult Conversations (3+/4) — How to make an impact during difficult conversations. Whenever we talk about sensitive matters, we risk having a conversation that is full of emotions but is not moving us toward solving the problem. This book gives a framework for conducting such conversations in a more productive manner. Example: analyze contributions instead of assigning blame. Very practical yet general. Full of good advice.
• Law School for Everyone: Corporate Law (3/4) — How law constrains companies, their employees, and management. Great resource to build an intuition around corporate law. Example: when you can act in your own interest and when you have to put the company first. A very good appendix to the main volume (4-/4, BBR#12).

Fiction:

• Defiant (3-/4) — Okay end to a good series. Previous volumes had not only action and good writing but also a story, a good dose of world-building, and mystery. This one had only action and writing. It’s not bad but it’s just a decent young adult sci-fi, nothing more.
• Germination (3/4) — Battle Mage Farmer Vol. 2 (Vol. 1: 3-/4, BBR#8). More action, hopepunk went into the background. Still a lot of world-building and mystery. Good choice for anyone with a thing for completely overpowered characters.

Stats:

• Books read this year: ~144 (+6)
• Books on the shelf: 21 (-2)
• Books on the wishlist: 181 (+2)