Non-fiction x6, Fiction x6

Voytek Pituła

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VP of Books

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3 min read

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Aug 6, 2024

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Non-fiction

• Exploring Metaphysics (4-/4) — Excellent entrypoint to theoretical philosophy. What is mind, what is identity, what assumptions contradict free will, what it means to “exist”. Good exercise in abstract thinking and a strong intellectual stimulus. Beautifully delivered and heavily based on current scientific research (e.g. neurology, quantum physics, cosmology).
• Consciousness and the Brain (3+/4) — Deep and well-written dive into brain processes responsible for consciousness. Not life-changing but still strongly recommended for anyone with even slight interest in neuroscience.
• Software Architecture, The Hard Parts (3/4) — Good but not great book on more advanced topics around software architecture. It shares both good and bad parts of Fundamentals … (BBR #2024.1). It talks about many different patterns, provides valuable vocabulary and shows the process of weighting tradeoffs and architectural thinking. At the same time, it comes with the questionable split between the roles of architect and developer, mostly neglects human aspects of collaboration and is generally dry.
• Good Inside (4/4) — Great resource for parents. It’s not the first book I’ve read about parenting, but I still got a few novel insights. It reinforces most of the standard advice, but it’s also comprehensive, well written and even comes with some good hints on relationships in general. Strongly recommended.
• Grokking algorithms (3/4) — Good resource for people without formal CS education. You get a basic grasp of algorithms in 3h of a book rather than 15h of classes. For people working in the field, only useful as a review material. But useful nonetheless.
• ADHD 2.0 (2+/4) — Not satisfactory. I wanted to learn what ADHD is and how it works. The book didn’t give me that knowledge. Maybe I approached it with wrong expectations, as the book seems more targeted at people dealing with ADHD, rather than those willing to understand it. Also, the fact that authors identify themselves as people with ADHD didn’t help on the objectivity front.

Fiction

• System Collapse (2/4) — Murderbot vol. 7. I have no idea why I kept listening to the series, but I no longer will. I realised there is very little in those books and it’s not worth my time.
• He Who Fights with Monsters 11 (4-/4) — Absolutely engaging and gripping. While the series starts to get a bit long, I still love the characters, the world and the plot. It’s focused (no jumping between characters) and really entertaining.
• Life Reset (3-/4) — Simple MMORPG/4X read aloud. Very little finesse, no personality in the characters, no interesting plot, no creative world building. But it’s not bad, and I would go for the next volume if I didn’t have better things to read. But I do.
• The General of Izril (4/4) — Wandering Inn vol. 6. I’m continuously amazed by how each book in the series is slightly different. This time we get world-level politics and history, large-scale battles and an absolutely amazing character of psychotic, murderous, but relatively well-intended, clown.
• The Primal Hunter 9 (4/4) — It slowly grew to be my favourite LitRPG series. Good humour, interesting characters, not the worst plot and world building. It even has some interesting problems, like freeing a slave who doesn’t want to be freed.
• Defiance of the Fall 13 (3/4) — Not as great as some other series but still grandiose, still entertaining and still worth reading.

Stats:

• Books read this year: ~65
• Books on the shelf: 15 (-7)
• Books on the wishlist: 205 (+5)