Bookshelf

These are my notes on books I’ve read.

You can click on each one to get to the corresponding post about that book. There’s a varying level of detail in each post; some just have a couple of quick thoughts and maybe some clippings like [[The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Hoffman]]^N, and some have very detailed notes like [[Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman]]^N.

2024

[[The Trial and Death of Socrates, Plato]]^N

[[On Numbers and Games, Conway]]^N
⭐⭐️️
"The games we shall consider are in spirit closer to Chess than to Football."

[[Some Fruits of Solitude, Penn]]^N

[[Map and Territory, Yudkowsky]]^N

[[The Journal of John Woolman]]^N

[[The God Delusion, Dawkins]]^N

[[The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin]]^N

[[There Is No Antimemetics Division, qntm]]^N

[[Norway, March]]^N

[[The Selfish Gene, Dawkins]]^N

[[Optionality, Meadows]]^N

[[A Mathematician's Apology, Hardy]]^N

[[The Book of Numbers, Conway]]^N
⭐

[[Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Aaronson]]^N
⭐⭐️️
"While quantum mechanics was invented a century ago to solve technical problems in physics, today it can be fruitfully explained from an extremely different perspective: as part of the history of ideas, in math, logic, computation, and philosophy, about the limits of the knowable."

[[One Hundred Years of Solitude, Márquez]]^N
⭐⭐️️
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

[[The Alchemist, Coelho]]^N

[[80,000 Hours, Todd]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Hoffman]]^N
⭐
"Erdős first did mathematics at the age of three, but for the last twenty-five years of his life, since the death of his mother, he put in nineteen-hour days, keeping himself fortified with 10 to 20 milligrams of Bezedrine or Ritalin, strong espresso, and caffeine tablets."

[[Revenge, Ogawa]]^N

[[Poems of the Decade 2011-2020]]^N

[[Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck]]^N
⭐

[[Gone Girl, Flynn]]^N
⭐

Unfinished

[[The Road to Reality, Penrose]]^N

2023

[[The MANIAC, Labatut]]^N
⭐

[[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle]]^N

[[Red Notice, Browder]]^N

[[Flatland, Abbott]]^N

[[Zero to One, Thiel]]^N

[[Tools of Titans, Ferris]]^N

[[The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Christie]]^N

[[The Best of Roald Dahl]]^N
⭐
"I stuff all my little pets myself when they pass away. Will you have another cup of tea?"

[[Poems of the Decade 2001-2010]]^N
⭐

[[Norse Mythology, Gaiman]]^N

[[Murder on the Orient Express, Christie]]^N

[[Math Games with Bad Drawings, Orlin]]^N

[[Love and Math, Frenkel]]^N

[[Mythos, Fry]]^N
⭐

[[Fictions, Borges]]^N
⭐

[[What is ChatGPT Doing?, Wolfram]]^N

[[The Stranger, Camus]]^N

Unfinished

[[Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman]]^N

[[The Moscow Puzzles, Kordemsky]]^N

2022

[[The Trial, Kafka]]^N

[[Capitalist Realism, Fisher]]^N

[[How do undergraduates do mathematics?]]^N

[[Genius At Play, Roberts]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks]]^N
⭐

[[Good Omens, Gaiman]]^N

[[Pale Blue Dot, Sagan]]^N
⭐
"For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us... edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven't forgotten."

[[Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling]]^N

[[The Metropolitan Man, Wales]]^N

Unfinished

[[The Precipice, Ord]]^N

[[The Elephant in the Brain, Hanson]]^N

[[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling]]^N

[[The Fascination of Groups, Budden]]^N

2021

[[Atomic Habits, Clear]]^N

[[How To Live, Sivers]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[Being You, Seth]]^N
⭐

[[East of Eden, Steinbeck]]^N

[[Superintelligence, Bostrom]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[Deep Work, Newport]]^N
⭐

[[The Unfolding of Language, Deutscher]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[The Scout Mindset, Galef]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[The Turing Omnibus, Dewdney]]^N

[[Body By Science, Little]]^N

[[Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig]]^N
⭐

[[Algorithms to Live By, Christian]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!]]^N

[[Gödel, Escher, Bach]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman]]^N
⭐

[[Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Rowling]]^N

[[Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut]]^N

Unfinished

[[The Mind's I, Dennet]]^N

[[Island, Huxley]]^N

[[Solving Mathematical Problems, Tao]]^N

[[Getting Things Done, Allen]]^N

2020

[[The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas]]^N

[[Sum, Eagleman]]^N
⭐⭐️️

[[Flow, Csikzentmilhalyi]]^N

[[The Way of Kings, Sanderson]]^N
⭐

[[Lord of the Flies, Golding]]^N

Unfinished

[[Spark, Hagerman]]^N

[[Words of Radiance, Sanderson]]^N

[[Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery]]^N

[[Sapiens, Harari]]^N

Pre-2020

[[Stardust, Gaiman]]^N

[[The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger]]^N

[[Catch-22, Heller]]^N

[[Frankenstein, Shelley]]^N

[[1984, Orwell]]^N

[[Brave New World, Huxley]]^N

[[To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee]]^N

[[The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck]]^N

[[The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald]]^N

[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey]]^N

[[Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut]]^N
"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."

[[Meditations, Aurelius]]^N
⭐⭐️️