What reads changed your perspective this year? What reads were refreshing or sobering? I really enjoyed the adventure prose “In a Sunburned Country” by Bill Bryson, sobering and concerning “San Fransicko” and “Apocalypse Never” by Shellenberger and the works of Hayek, as well light, funny, and applicable “Humor, Seriously” and “the Culture Map”, among other things!
One thing I’ve noticed this year that the books I read often fall into two categories:
- Hard to read, dry, boring even, disagreeable, but contain some interesting idea/challenge that I did not think about before
- Easy to read, agreeable, but contains less radically new ideas for me
I tried to make the distinctions in my reviews below, and here is a list of the 2022 books:
The Culture Map | Erin Meyer | 10/10
Lifespan | David A. Sinclair |10/10
Humor, Seriously | Jennifer Aaker, Naomi Bagdonas | 8/10
Economics in One Lesson | Henry Hazlitt | 9/10
The Road to Serfdom | Friedrich A. Hayek | 10/10
A Brief History of Thought | Luc Ferry | 8/10
The Intellectuals And Socialism | Friedrich A. Hayek | 10/10
Apocalypse Never | Michael Shellenberger | 8/10
12 Rules for Life | Jordan B. Peterson | 8/10
The Good Enough Parent | The School of Life | 2/10
How to Be a Dad: guide to pregnancy & birth | Oscar Duke | 10/10
Salt: A World History | Mark Kurlansky | 7/10
The Art of Thinking Clearly | Rolf Dobelli | 6/10
San Fransicko | Michael Shellenberger | 9/10
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned | Kenneth O. Stanley, Joel Lehman | 7/10
Finite and Infinite Games | James P. Carse | 5/10
In a Sunburned Country | Bill Bryson | 9/10
The Culture Map
by Erin Meyer
10/10
Essential, funny, and instructive — an absolute must read for anyone!
Meyer is an American living in France and teaching in a business school working with multinational companies, which makes her a perfect insider into how cultures differ when it comes to various aspects of social interactions. Her delivery is funny and effective — just a delight to read!
The book points out that it’s hard to notice your culture’s peculiarities while you are in it — the exact reason why traveling and exploring is so powerful — once you see how cultures do things differently — it will first blow your mind, but then will force you to think more critically about practices and conventions.
Applied to business world, Meyer points out that a lot of misunderstandings come from cultural differences in the way things are done. While the book is systematic about it, it’s also vivid with the examples.
I have a blog post draft called “Russians like to give unsolicited opinions” — something that I noticed only after having spent a few years in US. Well, turns out, on the scale of giving negative (instructive) feedback Russian are very much to the “Direct” end of the spectrum, while US is right at the opposite end of it — Americans must shit-sandwich the feedback, otherwise it’s might be perceived as rude.
The book is abound with fun but practical examples like this. I highly recommend to absolutely anyone who is working with people from other cultures!
Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To
by David A. Sinclair
10/10
I enjoyed this book a lot! Otherwise I would not have finished 300 pages in 4 days.
David Sinclair states that aging is a… disease, that could be and should be treated just like any other disease. If fact, treating/delaying aging could indirectly help with many other diseases — like cancer, diabetes, dementia, alzheimer’s — since the chance of those diseases currently increase exponentially with age.
It’s fascinating to learn about the subject from the person who is actually the leading researcher in the field, not just a journalist or writer. He goes into details about different mechanisms of aging, and what methods exists to reduce it, halt it, and sometimes even reverse it temporarily. All of that using rather simple methods, just using the same things our body uses to regulate itself. The key is to understand how to regulate itself to halt aging. Why the body ages at all if it can prevent it? Well, evolutionary speaking, there is no benefit for humans to not age — the important part is to reproduce.
Then there is gene editing which opens a whole set of new possibilities which in theory could allow to completely stop or even reverse the processes associated with aging. But is a relatively new area of research.
I really appreciate how Sinclair was super clear that his goal is to extend the healthy lifespans, not the total time the heart keeps beating. Luckily, very simple and intuitive methods can help increase the healthy lifespans — consistent (and relatively low) carbs diet, regular exercise, and a periodic exposure to uncomfortable temperatures.
Anyway, interesting book that is fun to read — can recommend to everyone!
Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life
by Jennifer Aaker, Naomi Bagdonas
8/10
While the book is not mind blowing, super deep, or even that funny, I give it all 5 stars because in just 200 quick pages authors manage to bring home an important message: humor (or more generally, levity) is an antidote for stress, fear, pain, distrust and many other negative emotions, and everyone benefits from applying it both in personal lives (many already do), and in work environment (that’s where things went wrong and many people are just droning through their work lives). The make a great case for how humor and levity help pretty much in every way at work, and I could agree more. The core advice is clear: bring authenticity, be open, be present, and don’t take everything so seriously!
The book also glances over the mechanics of humor, which honestly does a decent job — you can literally dissect jokes after reading that chapter. The main insight, which somehow I did not think about before, is that to create a joke, one needs to identify a truth first. All jokes are based on some truthful observation. Then you just attach the elements: unexpected conclusion, surprising consequence, some seeming contradiction, exaggeration etc. That explains why comedians seem to always be saying the most truths these days — that’s because that’s literally what they are doing!
In short, can recommend this book to anyone — because it’s so short and light — but especially to people having desk jobs and find themselves devoid of joy at work sometimes — this simple book can really change your perspective, attitude and the outcomes at work!
Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest & Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
by Henry Hazlitt
9/10
It’s easy to forget how easy the fundamental economics is — any reasonable 13 year old would be able to understand the basics — yet most even well educated people loose the forest among the trees after being bamboozled by smart sounding “experts” who use complicated words that make you think like you are just not cut to understand it.
Hazlitt explains the basic lesson of economics in literally one paragraph, and the rest of the book is just examples of the application of the principle. The lesson is this: when making decisions, you have to consider the effects on all the participants, and not only in the short term. The basic common fallacy is to focus only on a single loud group and not consider the effect of the policy on everyone else.
Book does an incredible job at explaining the applications of this principle in a simple language that easy straight forward to follow.
Hazlitt is, of course, a libertarian, and like any classical economist or libertarian, he does not spend too much time acknowledging all the good things that “bad” policies ended up achieving — some effects are so long term or so unpredictable that it’s really hard to know until you try it — and Hazlitt does not take into account this ambiguity at all. That said, author is still doing much more than usual of playing a devil’s advocate and considering the counter points right away — which is great because it makes it for a more honest picture.
All in all, this book is so easy to read and is so fun that I can recommend it to absolutely everyone. It will help you see through the bullshit of the policies you hear or read about. It’s incredible how the issues discussed did not age at all: fears of automation and policies to provide employment are 200+ years old! As noted, those who don’t remember the history are bound to repeat it. Well, read the history along with this basic economics, and it will make analyzing what’s going on today just that much more fun.
The Road to Serfdom
by Friedrich A. Hayek
10/10
A sobering guide on how a country converts to socialism and then to dictatorship. Very refreshing in light of what’s happening in Russia today, but also illustrative of the spirit of the times in US and Europe.
Hayek proposes that intellectuals tend to gravitate towards socialistic view because they don’t need to deal with practical matters day to day, and socialism is very appealing in theory (utopia), as well as it is convincing. But when it comes to implementing all the socialistic ideas it turns out that everyone can’t just magically become more rich and have everything and not do anything. And so the country struggles in making decisions until the elite decide to entrust the power into a single person. That person tend to become a dictator, and often not benevolent.
Plus, obviously, market provides and effective system of providing information about everything. As soon as you kill the market, whoever is in charge is operating blind.
Anyway, sobering essay, recommend to anyone. If only to better see through the printed bullshit.
Consider NYT piece today:
> The deal [Musk buying Twitter] is the latest example of how extreme inequality is shaping American society. A small number of very wealthy people end up making decisions that affect millions of others. That has always been true, of course. But it is truer when inequality is so high.
This is simply not true. In a perfectly equal socialist regime the power is all in hands of a small circle of people.
This is not to say that extreme inequality does not have its issues, but papers like NYT like to attribute all bad projections to things they are fighting against, like inequality or climate change.
Hayek talks about how the incumbent librelism does not have a utopia vision to stimulate the imagination of people, while socialism does, which makes it so appealing. Well, right on! Consider this NYT piece from yesterday:
> Macron has retained the presidency in large part because of his strength among older voters. “The French electorate has fractured along lines that are largely generational,” Stacy Meichtry and Noemie Bisserbe of The Wall Street Journal wrote: In the first round, Macron won the oldest group — those 60 and older. Le Pen won voters between 35 and 59, and Mélenchon, the far left candidate, won those 18 to 34.
> “Radical politics in France is not about to fade,” Roger said. Le Pen tapped into voters’ disappointment about the course of their lives. Mélenchon offered an idealistic vision of a society where the profit motive does not dominate, inequality is reduced and the environment is protected.
> “Nobody else was offering young people the chance to dream,” Roger said. “They will want to continue to do that.”
Regardless of your views, the essay is worth a read.
Under liberalism, even though anyone can make it, not everyone does. Under socialism, nobody makes it, so you don’t really have anything to compare with, for better or worse.
A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living
by Luc Ferry
8/10
Mostly hard to follow, but full of wonderful insights, this book is neither comprehensive nor good entry into philosophy, yet I’d recommend to anyone who wants to dabble in understanding the nature and the history of ethics, guides to a good life, and the question of salvation.
Author takes you through several key phases of human thought that culminated with:
- Stoics in the ancient period, who realized that the cause of unhappiness are hopes and regrets, and so you should focus more on the present (similarly to Buddhism), and believed that the nature is transcendent to human — we are just parts of the bigger and wonderful whole, and we should not try to alter it in vein (similar to the current Environmentalism dogma). For salvation — yes, you die, but it’s more like a transformation — you are just part of this universe anyway.
- Christianity in middle ages, which brought about the unprecedented until then idea of equality of men and free will, which in turn defined the morality. Most notably though Christianity brought an irresistible idea of salvation where you literally don’t die — you go to a better place (if you follow the rules of course).
- Modern liberal humanism could no longer believe the tales of Christianity, and modified it by vesting the meaning into the humans and are capable of enlarging the thought and perfecting themselves. Caring for and improving human condition is the ultimate goal in and of itself, because there is nothing else.
- Finally, enter Nietzsche who deconstructs all the previous theorias, ethics, and salvation doctrines as a purely human constructs, the idols we created to fool ourselves. But what instead? Well, nothing coherent, apparently, just a collection of random ideas: focus on positive not negative and embrace the contradiction, live in a “grand style” which was a bit confusing but as far as I understood it meant doing things you actually want to do and you are good at, and good old “hope a little less, love a little more — accept things as they are”.
Not satisfied with the incoherent set of ideas of deconstructionism, the author then goes on to make some patchwork amends to humanism and pitches it as the best way forward.
Reading about each of the eras of though was fascinating and fun, though the language — perhaps due to translation — was a bit terse and unnecessarily complicated. I also like author’s hope for philosophy to live on and guide us humans in the eternal questions of life.
I was not though impressed with the critique of modern society which completely ignored the good parts (of capitalism, democracy, free markets and others), and the resulting post-deconstructed humanism also did not seem very robust.
All in all — fun read — especially for a vacation!
The Intellectuals And Socialism
by Friedrich A. Hayek
10/10
Unbelievably acute essay that withstands the test of time.
All the arguments fit perfectly well if you replace the “socialism” with any other trendy utopian movement that lacks practical think-through. Here in 2022, wokeism and environmentalism came to mind, and all the observations made by Hayek apply flawlessly.
The basic observation is that the prevailing ideas in society spread through a class of intellectuals — the second hand dealers in ideas — basically any professionals whose job it is to proliferate knowledge — teachers, professors, journalists — people who due to their profession are listened to by many. So far so good — that’s working as intended. Then come two failure modes.
First, when intellectuals are talking with expert tone on subjects that they are not experts at all. Consider all the unfortunate false extensions that people derived from the otherwise useful theory of evolution. Hayek points out the intellectuals who becomes the most active and prolific celebrities in the movements are typically not respected in the scientific community on the subject because the lack the rigor and scientific doubt. Consider the environment catastrophism — good scientists don’t end up making headlines because the things we actually know are neither sensational nor catastrophic. Nor do people familiar with the practical matters become catastrophist — you need to be convinced beyond the facts in what you believe to inspire great movements. That’s why many authors equate Socialism, Communism (Yuval Harari), and Environmentalism (Alex Epstine) with pseudo religions.
Second, intellectuals tend to err towards utopias, since it’s just not sexy enough to dream and talk about micro optimizations of the mainstream order of the liberalism. There needs to be a utopia that captures the imagination and dictates all the decisions through its lenses. Ask any woke person about the flaw in their reasoning — and you’d learn that they did not actually think about reasoning at all — it does not matter — what matters is the underlying principles in which they believe in. And since these principles are plausible and justifiable in abstract, and not really falsifiable, it’s hard to argue with, and that’s precisely why the movement becomes successful.
The solution that Hayek proposes is for the defenders of the freedom to dream big and offer its own vision of utopia that is more compatible with the liberal view.
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
by Michael Shellenberger
8/10
Highly recommend to anyone feeling depressed about the future of humanity, or to better understand how the world works and how to predict the outcomes for the next decades.
While the book frequently exaggerates, and the style is at times dry, it’s a gem of a book that methodically explains why the catastrophist viewpoint is misleading and harmful.
Topics:
- global warming / CO2
- plastics (I have the most disagreements with this chapter)
- energy
- food security
and many more!
The core principle of this book is to look at issues through the lenses of humanism. People these days forget that humanism stands for caring above else about what’s human, which means yes putting human above other animals. Using that framework many of the decisions the West is doing today are seen much less favorably to say the least. It’s obviously a complicated and nuanced topic of what’s the right balance and tradeoff, and Shellenberger does well to represent the humanist end of the spectrum (the opposite end of the spectrum being humans are evil anyway so let’s instead keep the nature as it is at all cost, including people literally starving and dying from the lack of access to clean water)
In addition to these more philosophical discussions (one can reasonably decide to optimize for different things depending on their values), Shellenberger also debunks a few common myths like that nuclear is dangerous (it’s literally not — it’s the safest source of energy, with the cherry on top that it produces zero CO2). Guess who benefits from nuclear myth? Exactly, the oil and gas cats.
All in all, highly recommend to everyone. It’s fine to disagree, and it will definitely make some scratch their heads.
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
by Jordan B. Peterson
8/10
Fun read to get into some difficult questions. Unlike many of the modern books, Peterson is not afraid to go deep into the details of the really uncomfortable questions which often don’t have clear answers. He uses a mix of psychology, history, philosophy, religious knowledge, and literature, along with the weaving style when talking about eternal questions but sometimes crisp logic to drive some important points home.
At this point of my life I did not find the more philosophical musings that valuable, but I expect someone with a more diverse emotional state easily could. However, I feel like maybe just reading the originals of Dostoyevsky instead might be even more interesting.
However, I very much enjoyed the sections with the crisp logic and straightforward (but almost unconventional) advice — the actual rules for life. Some of the rules are pretty unique, and many target parenting which I especially liked.
This book is also available as an audiobook, and JP narrates it himself, and it’s fun to listen to.
Overall, can recommend to anyone, but especially to new parents! Just keep in mind that you might want to skip some more of the esoteric discussions if you don’t find them interesting.
The Good Enough Parent: How to Raise Contented, Interesting and Resilient Children
by The School of Life
2/10
Meh. Not a bad book but it’s very simplistic and talks about obvious things. Love your kids, don’t kill their creativity, makes sense. Don’t recommend unless you had some particular issues growing up that you want to check against. Also I very much disliked the book asserting that having kids is not for everyone — that feel very judgemental and unreasonably opinionated.
How to Be a Dad: The ultimate guide to pregnancy, birth & dirty nappies
by Oscar Duke
10/10
Now — that’s a good parenting book! Excellent practical summary of the ~18 months around the baby birth for dads who want to know the useful facts without much drama and noise.
The book is short, well organized, and contains the main scientific facts (and myths), and nice practical advice for each stage of the process of becoming a father. It’s written humor and passion.
Highly recommend as both a preview and a place to revisit for each concrete step of the process.
Salt: A World History
by Mark Kurlansky
7/10
Entertaining and easy read that takes you on the tour of the world history through the lens of salt.
I really liked exploring the familiar events in familiar civilizations through the context of salt — just like I did doing so through the context of oil in “The Prize”, except of course the history of salt is as old as the history of humanity.
It’s pretty incredible what critical role salt development played — and it’s hard to comprehend it now that salt is so cheap — and it’s so abundant — but it’s in fact the logistics of salt production that makes a difference — because of how much is needed — it’s an absolute necessity and very inelastic good. Salt works driven the choice of many settlements in Roman empire, it was the source of revenue for many states, it was a natural place to introduce state monopolies and suffer the consequences of the black market and people revolts.
The writing is ok and at times pretty fascinating, but generally I find it to be a bit too much detail — the book could be shortened by 50% without loosing much value.
Makes for a fun beach read, and you’d like it if you like history and analysis, or if you like cooking and exploring different cultures.
The Art of Thinking Clearly
by Rolf Dobelli
6/10
A quick overview of all the known biases, fallacies, and other limitations in human reasoning.
I like the comprehensiveness of the list, but it comes a bit dry as the author tries to explain everything so succinctly that it does not really sink in. There are books written on each of these 50+ chapters, and they go into a great length explaining how the bias works, how to fight it, why it’s important, and what are the implications.
This also means that most of the chapters are very obvious to anyone who read books like Freakonomics, Thinking Fast and Slow, The Winner’s Curse and anything else by Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, Dan Ariely etc.
That said I did find a few chapters that I’ve never seen before. A very simple observation really caught my attention. If you have two groups of results, you can often improve the averages in *both* groups by trading the results. Consider this joke: a Texan moving to California increases the average IQ in both states. This joke implies that people in Texas, on average, are smarter than in California. And those who move out are dumber than average in Texas. However, they are smarter than average in California. Therefore, a dump Texan that moved out increased Texas’s average, but since they are smarter than average in California, they also increased the average in California. Obviously, the global average did not change. This goes to show the dealing with averages is extremely tricky.
Anyway, can recommend as a light and entertaining read that has completely unrelated chapters, and you can skip the obvious ones. But don’t expect to find much eye-opening material.
San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities
by Michael Shellenberger
9/10
An absolute must read if you live in America!
Regardless of where you stand on the political, religious, and moral spectrum, this book will enrich your worldview and clarify the thoughts on multiple important topics: mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness, racism, homicide, and incarceration.
Respectfully written, it carefully outlines the logic and reasoning of progressives (Shellenberger argues it come with the best intentions in heart), reconstructs in detail why it leads to the poor observable outcomes, and proposes realistic approaches that actually demonstrably work (Amsterdam used to be very similar to San Francisco).
If you don’t live in US, you will probably find the following quotes obvious and trivial, in which case you probably won’t find this book interesting because you won’t understand what the problem even is: “It is simply not okay to allow people sleep on sidewalks, in parks, and on the side of the highways. Not is it okay for people to sit on the sidewalk and shout threats and profanity at people who walk by, nor for people to defecate in front of retail offices and stores” and “What kind of a civilization leaves its most vulnerable people to use deadly substances and die on the streets? What kind of city regulates ice cream stores more strictly than drug dealers who kill 713 of its citizens in a single year?”
Unfortunately, if you live on the west coast and visit the cities such as LA, San Francisco, or Seattle, you’ve experienced all of the above. San Francisco today feels the opposite of safe in about a half of the common areas of the city. I hope that everyone agrees that the situation is not okay today, so the question is how do we solve this issue without sacrificing the values people hold strongly? This book will provide many thinking points.
Depending on the political and religious views I suspect everyone will find different aspects of the book the most interesting. Here is my pick of highlights:
- Mixing mentally ill, drug addicts, and merely poor people into a single label of “homeless” is deceptive and makes it harder to address the issues because the approach should be different depending on the root cause. In brief, mentally ill need psychiatric help, drug addicts need a rehab, and poor people without a home need a community to restore their affiliation in it. Today, San Francisco spending billions (that’s right, with the B) of dollars yearly, but not on what’s actually needed.
- History of SF is fascinating. Harvey Milk, Soros, Moscone, Brown, and Jim Jones — it’s most intriguing than fiction.
- A philosophical breakdown of the victimology. Victimology is the framework of morality where one basically cannot criticize/apply law to a person who is a victim of the system because it’s not really their fault. Shellenberger shows where victimology is coming from, how it compares to traditional religions’ morality, and what are its flaws. In particular, “centering” on the victim deprives them of the freedom/agency over their lives. Saying “this person is a victim of the system therefore we should not expect them to do better” has always had a sinister paternalistic agency-depriving ring to me.
- The structure of the “homeless industrial complex”, with its often perverse incentives. Government outsourcing the duties to organizations that lack accountability.
Just a friendly reminder — be critical of what your read — you don’t have to agree with everything or anything, but you owe it to yourself to be intellectually honest and apply consistent logic and reasoning to the arguments. I think Shellenberger did a phenomenal job clearly presenting the lines of reasoning from multiple sides, so no matter where you stand you’ll find a stimulating intellectual exercise of a friendly debate with the author.
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective
by Kenneth O. Stanley, Joel Lehman
7/10
Goal setting, breaking it down to the steps, and methodical execution is the best way to achieve an objective that is within sight. But how do you shoot for the stars? How do you come up with extraordinary progress? You can’t just plan and will your way to greatness. The only thing you could do is to be open-minded and curious, follow your guts and dig deep into what feels interesting. This is the best way to discover something truly new. It might be not at all what you were looking for, but it could be something great nonetheless.
This is the tl;dr of the book, and I would take a star off because the book could have been quite a bit shorter — it’s the same argument over and over again. I also think authors did not do good enough job explaining why objectives and divide and conquer are so great.
With that caveat aside, I think the main idea of this book is profound: you can’t plan greatness. The reason is rather simple: if you could see the next big thing (invention, idea, whatever) from where we as humanity stand — then the job is easy — set the objective and execute. But the thing is that of course we don’t see all the possible big next things! We can only see so far. By focusing on objectives exclusively, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to explore the unexplored. And time and time again completely accidental discoveries in one place lead to unprecedented improvements in others.
Authors demonstrate this effect more formally with the aid of a computer simulation, which is quite convincing, and is a great model for the problem.
I also really liked their application of this idea to education: standardized testing does not improve the learning; the accuracy of the tests does not improve the education; setting objectives to improve the education does not improve it. Most people understand this intuitively, yet society meeps moving towards more and more standardized tests, which is really counter-productive. Tests have their application of course, but it should not be the primary method, and it should not be the goal in and of itself.
The book does not really talk about this, but I see a direct confirmation of the central idea in all the major computer science discoveries of the last 80 years. All the great innovative things came from places that invested into basic research — without thinking about the future applications too much — scientists and engineers were exploring things that looked interesting, not what would be “good for business”. A lot of big companies today lose the sight of this fact. If you really want to create something radically new, you have to let people explore on their own, without a particular plan.
Overall, highly recommend the book to anyone, especially you work as an engineer, scientist, or an educator. It’s a bit tedious at times, but the idea and the framework is really good.
Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
by James P. Carse
5/10
Tough to read, dry (or technical, similar to Kant or Nitsche), and a bit repetitive, this book does provide a set of interesting dichotomies that are exciting to ponder at.
For example, Carse notes that great stories resonate with people who listen to them, and they re-tell the myths which makes it ever stronger. The opposite of resonance is amplification — a single voice is amplified which silences all others. We don’t listen to the amplified speaker for what is being said, but only because it is all that is being said. This example aged so well — with the social media and mainstream press amplifying very particular voices so much that it does indeed feel like silencing of all the other voices.
Another quote that looks at something day-to-day with an interesting angle: “The trash of civilization does not belong to nature; it *is* nature — but in a form society no longer is able to exploit for its own ends”. I felt this way always, but could not quite pin it down. Whenever someone is talking about human activity and its impact on the planet, or nature, it is useful to keep in mind that humans are not capable of changing the nature — what changes is how much benefit we can derive from a particular form of nature.
“You will not hear my explanations until you are suspicious of your own truths; you will not accept my explanations until you are convinced of you error”. That’s exactly what if you want to change someone’s mind — start with the questions so that they arrive at suspicion of error in their thinking first.
Most of the book is not that exciting though. While an arbitrary dichotomy between finite games and infinite games seemingly allowed Carse to come up with many interesting juxtapositions, the logic was not exactly flawless.
Overall, would recommend only if you want to challenge your mind or if you are looking to discover something randomly new.
In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson
9/10
An incredible page-turner that made me love Australia, laugh while reading and learning some fascinating details about it!
There is no point in spoiling the contents, but a few words about the style: it’s wry, funny, and refreshingly honest — it’s hard to imagine such honesty in today’s 2022 — Bryson is speaking freely and non-judgmentally.
This books reads like a fiction story, except that it’s much better — rooted in history and with observation about a real place — this books will have you hooked from the page one.
Highly recommend to absolutely anyone, probably best to read while traveling to get inspired to do a real exploration — not just sitting in a five-star hotel the entire vacation.
Stats:
17 books, ~4700 pages
Previous Years:
2021: https://alexsalo.medium.com/books-2021-c5d8cb1be1e5
2020: https://alexsalo.medium.com/books-2020-e1bd23ac379c
2019: https://alexsalo.medium.com/books-2019-847b0be98a50
2018: https://alexsalo.medium.com/books-2018-c78a754e508e
2017: https://alexsalo.medium.com/books-2017-e3f88be7a23a
2016: https://alexsalo.medium.com/books-2016-d01ee6a93a7
