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 N .
2025
Unfinished
2024
Areopagitica, Milton N
Tractate of Education, Milton N
Plainsong, Haruf N
⭐
At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft N
New Atlantis, Bacon N
Essays, Bacon N
Anatomy of the State, Rothbard N
Blood Meridian, McCarthy N
⭐
The Torah N
The Golden Sayings, Epictetus N
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."
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 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
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 N
Unfinished
2022
Unfinished
2021
Unfinished
2020
Unfinished
Pre-2020