Average is Over

Average is Over – Tyler Cowen

Summary: There goes the jobs. People who can work with machines will win.

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TBD

Shoe Dog

Shoe Dog – Phil Knight

Summary: Great memoir from a man who has built a company with passion. Really interesting to see the struggles and how it was also very ‘amateur’ how they did things. Shows again that even if some companies look composed/well organised, there is a layer of chaos beneath/before.

Memorable quotes: Belief is irresistible Total effort will win peoples hearts Take a change of people, that’s what it’s all about It’s never just business. It will never be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean business is very bad. You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. We must all be professors of the jungle.

Tao Te Ching

Tao Te Ching – Lao-Tzu

Summary: Interesting philosophy from ancient China. It’s very applicable and I think should be appreciated with moderation. Good lessons and although I don’t get anything I have learned from it.

Designing Brand Identity

Designing Brand Identity – Alina Wheeler

Summary: Great book about designing that lays out all the different aspects of it. Really something that we will be using at Queal. Not really fit for a summary but I think it is one of the best books about everything brand identity (and was recommended highly too).

Death’s End

Death’s End – Liu Cixin

Just wow. Really good book that gets you thinking about the whole universe, what your place in it is and more. Also ties in AI and much research related to that.

Semi related I have been thinking about the purpose of life. And I think that the purpose of life is made by your actions. That there is no purpose before, but you give it purpose. You endow it onto life. That is quite magical 🙂

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/27/494927821/deaths-end-brings-an-epic-trilogy-to-a-satisfying-close

When The Three-Body Problem, the first instalment of Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, it drove home a big point: Science fiction from other countries has been overlooked too long here in the U.S., and it’s to everyone’s benefit to fix that.

Not only was The Three-Body Problem — first published in China in 2008 before being translated into English by acclaimed American author Ken Liu — an exquisitely epic novel, it was a fascinating window into how science fiction has evolved in a culture different than our own. Set in the near past as well as the near future, it depicts the first contact between a Chinese physicist and an alien race whose interest in Earth is less than benign — a timeworn idea that Liu rendered with complexity, nuance, and plenty of head-spinning astrophysics.

The Three-Body Problem was followed in 2015 by the equally challenging and rewarding The Dark Forest. Now, Remembrance of Earth’s Past has come to a close with Death’s End. As trilogy-cappers go, it’s satisfying — entirely on its own terms, though. Like the two instalments before it, Death’s End focuses on a different protagonist. In this case, it’s Cheng Xin, a rocket scientist from our era revived from artificial hibernation half a century in the future.

‘Three-Body Problem’ Asks A Classic Sci-Fi Question, In Chinese BOOK REVIEWS ‘Three-Body Problem’ Asks A Classic Sci-Fi Question, In Chinese Cultural Revolution-Meets-Aliens: Chinese Writer Takes On Sci-Fi PARALLELS Cultural Revolution-Meets-Aliens: Chinese Writer Takes On Sci-Fi The world she finds is not the one she remembers: The alien Trisolarans — who hadn’t yet reached Earth in her time — are now locked in a détente with humanity, thanks to an ingenious deterrent (which forms the core of The Dark Forest’s plot). But this new age of peace and technological prosperity is a precarious one, as she discovers when she’s charged with maintaining Earth’s defenses against an enemy that isn’t going to give up so easily.

The bones of the premise are nothing new, but Liu continues to elaborately dress them. And dress them. And dress them. If you thought The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest were expansive, they’re nothing compared to Death’s End. The plot telescopes out not merely for decades, but for centuries. One universe not enough? There are plenty more. How about some extra texts? There are numerous stories-within-stories nested in Death’s End, including a sequence of lushly told fairytales that show off Liu’s virtuosity, not to mention some sparkling, much-needed contrast with the heavier sci-fi tone of the rest of the work. Within this intricately structured, staggeringly cosmic, reality-contorting framework, he weaves all the personal and philosophical conflicts he’s seeded along the way into a resoundingly orchestrated finale.

If you thought ‘The Three-Body Problem’ and ‘The Dark Forest’ were expansive, they’re nothing compared to ‘Death’s End.’ The plot telescopes out not merely for decades, but for centuries. Jason Heller, unfortunately, a few of the flaws of the first two books are ported into Death’s End. Liu’s exposition can get downright leaden, especially when there are reams of scientific jargon and theory to be delivered to the reader. Still, his sheer joy in imparting these ideas beams through like a laser. And while Cheng Xin isn’t always compelling enough to carry the narrative, her revelations about the nature of the universe — not to mention a breathtaking denouement that gives the “message in a bottle” cliché a new lease on life — more than make up for it.

Another cliché creeps into the ending of Death’s End: rainbows. A bit on the nose, but Liu should be forgiven. The scope of Remembrance of Earth’s Past is majestic, but it’s also grim, with no shortage of sobering ruminations on humanity’s place in the metaphysical clockwork of existence. A little light at the end of the tunnel is a welcome respite.

“The precision of Nature can sometimes exceed the imagination,” Liu writes sagely, one of the many profound utterances sprinkled routinely throughout the trilogy. A meditation on technology, progress, morality, extinction, and knowledge that doubles as a cosmos-in-the-balance thriller, Death’s End is a testament to just how far his own towering imagination has taken him: Far beyond the borders of his country, and forever into the canon of science fiction.

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In October 2019, I listened to it again, and the book was again very good. Now time for book number four sometime soon.

A Clockwork Orange

Summary: As good as the movie. But has an extra chapter also. I think it also says something about memory. We can now, 2017, actually manipulate how someone feels about their memories. We construct the memory over and over again and this process can be influenced. So we can feel less emotions (PTSD) or even make something seem positive. This can be done with psychology but also medicines!

It’s 21 small chapters and can be listened in two-ish days. Definitively recommended.

Childhood’s End

Childhood’s End – Arthur Clarke

Summary: Good book about the novel idea that an alien race rules over humans and brings peace and prosperity. But they were actually only serving mankind to help their ‘children’ become a whole new (super) species.

Interesting ideas about world piece and how the universe is. But didn’t really bring many new ideas to my mind.

Tools of Titans

Tools of Titans – Tim Ferriss

Summary: good advice from many people. Organisation is not the best, but great to have at coffee table and read once very while. Can make larger summary later.

The Forever War

The Forever War – Joe Haldeman

Good sci-fi about a (too long) war in space with another race. It describes things like how the world changes (in waves) and how people in the war are different than civilians (also now the case). Fun idea about homo vs heterosexuality.

Not the best book ever for me, but I think it might be one of the first to use time-dilation in this way to let the characters move forward through time so elegantly.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut

Good book that plays with time, is anti-war, and used that time travel in a way to tell a story non-chronologically and still helps us see the perspective of the protagonist better.