Batched Books Reviews: #2024.4
Published in
3 min readMay 31, 2024
Non-fiction
- Financial Intelligence (3/4) — Finance for managers. Probably as lightweight as the topic allows (which is not much to be honest). Income statements, balance sheets, cash flows. Audiobook is not the greatest medium for this book, but it’s acceptable. I don’t know if you can actually learn something here, especially without daily exposure to discussed problems, but you can definitely get a grasp on the jargon and nature of the domain.
- Managing Humans (4-/4) — Direct, funny, concise, practical. Written by Rands himself. Has a few really nice chapters, e.g. about interviews, meetings or reorgs. There is little novelty in this book, but for me its strength is in brevity and delivery. Much recommended. If you’re to read one software management book, it’s a very decent candidate.
- Behave (4-/4) — The most technical book that can pretend to be a popular science one. Super comprehensive look into human behaviour. Considers genes, hormones, environment, neurology, cognitive biases, sociology and probably everything else that affects our behaviour. Probably the most substantial book targeted at a wider audience that I have seen. The only problem (beside its volume and effort needed to digest it) is that after reading it, you might start to seriously doubt the existence of free will and start to believe in Harri’s Seldon psychohistory instead.
- Never Split the Difference (3/4) — Psychology applied in the field of negotiations. I got a feeling the author knows what he is talking about, but I was not able to learn much from the book. The tips are probably useful, but it feels hard to put them in practice — a workshop might be more effective. Good as a protective measure, to recognise when we are “negotiated with”.
- User Story Mapping (3/4) — Product development from the perspective of taming complexity. Describes story mapping, a tool for understanding what can be built, aligning the team around that understanding and then prioritising the items.
- Lean Analytics (3/4) — Practical guide to analytics for startups. Gives intuition about what metrics might be important for a particular business type and how to collect and understand them. Good to read when you can leverage the content (e.g. you’re building/leading a company or its marketing division) otherwise it’s the kind of knowledge that will evaporate quickly.
Fiction
- Beware of Chicken 3 (3+/4) — Another one from Beware of Chicken. This time much more action but hope punk is still there. Xianxia cultivation is a nice flavour of progression fantasy, quite refreshing after my prolonged exposure to LitRPGs.
- Gravesong (3+/4) — Less grandiose version of Wandering Inn. But it’s a good thing because the book is focused more on the main characters instead of world-building. A bit different than anything else due to all the singing. Really solid position.
- Implode (3/4) — Another one from The Completionist Chronicles. Good balance between semi-serious action & adventure and more lightweight content (like a battle through teaching, jumping and sarcasm). I had the feeling that the formula, the world and the plot are getting exhausted. But I hope to be proven wrong with the next book.
- The Chimera Code (3+/4) — Simple cyberpunk for a simple man. But there is value in simplicity, and I really liked the book. A lot of (not complicated) action, some intrigue, good writing and good world building. Perfect book to entertain yourself with a bit of AIs, cyborgs, hackers and so on.
- Paladins grace (3/4) — Another romance with great world building. Gave me quite the same feeling as Swordheart (BBR#2024.3), which is not bad. Yes, it had a significant romance part which I not necessarily enjoyed. Yes, it was sometimes naive and predictable. But at the same time, it’s very well written and comes with quite a unique world that I particularly liked. I will eventually go for the rest of the series and other books from the author.
- Invent (3/4) — Another one from Completionist Chronicles. Nothing special but not bad.
Stats:
- Books read this year: ~41 (+12)
- Books on the shelf: 21 (-5)
- Books on the wishlist: 201 (-2)
