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, HoffmanN, and some have very detailed notes like Thinking, Fast and SlowN.

2025


Unfinished

2024

Areopagitica, MiltonN
Tractate of Education, MiltonN
Plainsong, HarufN
At the Mountains of Madness, LovecraftN
New Atlantis, BaconN
Essays, BaconN
Anatomy of the State, RothbardN
Blood Meridian, McCarthyN
The TorahN
The Golden Sayings, EpictetusN
The Trial and Death of Socrates, PlatoN
On Numbers and Games, ConwayN
⭐⭐️️
"The games we shall consider are in spirit closer to Chess than to Football."
Fruits of Solitude, PennN
Map and Territory, YudkowskyN
The Journal of John WoolmanN
The God Delusion, DawkinsN
The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinN
There Is No Antimemetics Division, qntmN
Norway, MarchN
The Selfish Gene, DawkinsN
OptionalityN
A Mathematician's Apology, HardyN
The Book of Numbers, ConwayN
Quantum Computing Since Democritus, AaronsonN
⭐⭐️️
"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, MárquezN
⭐⭐️️
"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, CoelhoN
80,000 Hours, ToddN
⭐⭐️️
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, HoffmanN

"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, OgawaN
Poems of the Decade 2011-2020N
Of Mice and Men, SteinbeckN
Gone Girl, FlynnN

Unfinished

2023


Unfinished

2022

The TrialN
Capitalist RealismN
How do undergraduates do mathematics?N
Genius At PlayN
⭐⭐️️
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a HatN
Good OmensN
Pale Blue DotN

"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 SecretsN
The Metropolitan ManN

Unfinished

2021


Unfinished

2020


Unfinished

Pre-2020