Reading List

Last updated Feb 2023

reading

• U.K. Le Guin, The Disposessed
• H. Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

paused

• J. Heller, Catch-22
• P. Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read
• N. Juster and J. Feiffer, The Phantom Tollbooth (second read)
• K. Patterson et al., Crucial Conversations

future

• J. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• P. Veyne et al, A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium
• C. Mann, 1493

past

2022

• N.N. Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
  • Dark Souls philosophy in a book: you will die over and over again, then you will git gud
• N.N. Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
  • If someone won’t take the L, stay away
• B. Mandelbrot and R.L. Hudson, The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
  • Staring at charts works sometimes
• S. Lem, The Cyberiad
  • A new invention probably won’t make you any happier
• M.S. Sorenson, I Hear You
  • People want their feelings validated

2021

• K. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (nth read)
  • Motto for life: so it goes
• N.N. Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
  • Success is more down to luck than we want to believe
• N.N. Taleb, Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
  • Don’t be the turkey
• T. Chiang, Exhalation: Stories
  • There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness
• T. Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
  • Searching for meaning where there isn’t any still leads to fun outcomes
• T. Hodgkinson, An Idler’s Manual
  • Doing nothing is a virtue

2019

• C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
  • We’re always learning we don’t know anything
• J.C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
  • Be wary of intervention, especially when it seems rational