Batched Book Reviews #7
Start with Why, Thinking in Bets, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, Accelerate, The Land: Founding, The Traveler’s Gate Trilogy, Second Foundation
Published in
3 min readJul 7, 2023
Non-fiction:
- Start with Why (2+/4) — I remember reading this book more than a decade ago and loving it. It is well-written, canonical, inspirational, and world-shaping. However, I still didn’t like it because it ignores boring businesses that don’t care about why, such as smaller companies in the manufacturing space. The reading experience is good, but it carries little real value for non-entrepreneurs, who make up the majority of people. It’s probably still worth reading, but don’t expect anything life-changing.
- Thinking in Bets (2+/4) — The book’s narrative is chaotic, jumping from one story to another and point to point without much order. It does not consider deterministic or close-to-deterministic decisions. It may be difficult to determine the book’s focus, which seems to encompass decision-making, cognitive biases, diversity, game theory, and psychology, among other topics. It tries to cover too much without guiding thought, resulting in a lack of clear focus. Readers without prior knowledge of these topics may find the book helpful, but those who have read at least one dedicated book for each area may find their perspective unchanged. Additionally, the narration could be better.
- The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (2/4) - The book discusses the influence of our subconsciousness on our lives. Although the author claims otherwise, the approach is unscientific and more focused on selling/teaching rather than analyzing and understanding. However, the mechanisms described in the book, such as the placebo effect, affirmation, and hypnosis, cannot be easily denied. Overall, the book is a step in the right direction and worth reading to explicitly consider our subconsciousness. However, those looking for a more scientific approach may be very disappointed.
- Accelerate (4/4) — The best research on software development I have seen. The main benefit of this book is that it supports things we already knew with heavy data-driven evidence. Additionally, it can serve as an introduction to research methodology, as many chapters are dedicated to this topic. The book is so packed with content that I had to lower my listening speed drastically to keep up.
Fiction:
- The Land: Founding (2+/4) — A new LitRPG series has caught my attention. It’s not bad, but there’s nothing particularly special about it. I might continue reading because future volumes promise more focus on city building, which could be an interesting twist.
- The Traveler’s Gate Trilogy (3-/4) — I have finished listening to The Crimson Vault and City of Light, and can now review the entire trilogy. Overall, it was an entertaining series, full of action and lightweight. There was one character I particularly liked, Kai, and the magic system based on territories (think pocket dimensions) was really interesting. One such territory is Valinhall, which is a huge house that generally tries to kill its occupants (and grants them powers if they survive). The plot was not super convoluted, but at least it did not have a clear distinction between “good guys” and “bad guys.”
- Second Foundation (3-/4) — A decent series continuation, but it feels like it has reached the point of diminishing returns. It is still fun and interesting to read, but naturally not as original as the first or second volume. It failed to keep my curiosity for what will happen next, and I will probably stop reading the series here.
Stats
- Books read this year: ~83 (+8)
- Books on the shelf: 14 (-7)
- Books on the wishlist: 163 (+13)
