Books I read last 6 months: September 2018

Just like 6 months ago, vacation is a great time to reflect. Here's the new list:

#1: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson

This book, especially its audio version, is read like a voice of conscience. Every rule starts the same - the author simply states, he knows who I am and he knows what I've done. Despite all my crafty deceit, he sees my flawed self-absorbed intentions, my dishonesty and vanity no matter what I say, there's no point denying it. So then he stops and asks: how dare you? How can you justify your being after all this? And there is no answer to this, and at this point it feels like whatever the punishment is, it is well deserved.

But then the author pauses and takes the reader back to philosophy, history and mysticism behind all this and explains that I'm not alone in this, in fact all of us are there with me. At this point the narration often ventured into religion, but it didn't bother me, because everything that is cited from religion is approached in a very symbolic manner. And the author explains, although this is normal, what we feel and do with all its flaws is deeply human. No matter what hole we are in, there is a way out, back to light, but it needs to be taken, step by step. And the author often draws parallels with his own background in a working class neighborhoods of Alberta, where author is usually the voice of reason and wisdom, while everyone else is not. (This is actually the only thing that slightly bothered me about the book: the examples would have been so much more powerful if derived from his own learnings, not from observing others).

The emphasis is on progress, hope and moving forward, no matter how tempting it is to stop. Every one of the 12 rules is re-lived as a mini-catharsis, you emerge out if slightly healthier, slightly more hopeful.

#2: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

So is the book about Jeff Bezos and about Amazon? Well, of course, both, but with other popular and well written books about founders such as Walter Isaacson's “Steve Jobs” or Ashlee Vance's “Elon Musk”, you can clearly tell it is about the founders first. With this book even the “and” in the title gives out early that the book is about Amazon, its operation, principles, customer obsession and everything that Jeff Bezos built. AND it is also about Jeff Bezos himself. But while Bezos's managerial style and the great anecdotes such as those of removed TVs from conference rooms or customer service executive grilled while the whole S-team was waiting for customer support call to be picked up are truly what gives reader a peak into Amazon's core, the chapters about Bezos' family history and childhood never link quite well with the rest of the book. In some way I think this is by design, a power of Amazon's model itself. With its simplicity, unapologetic customer obsession, logic and power of its principles it feels, more than any other technology company of this magnitude, a machine that has potential to continue running and growing in the future without relying on Bezos.

#3: The Foundations of Western Civilization by Thomas F.X. Noble

A great history course refresher like this one is great once in a while as a reminder of our own lifetime's insignificance in the context of civilizations. It plays strange games with time and perception. Daily events that we deem important are specs when zoomed out to centuries and disappear altogether when we start looking at millenniums. However the opposite can also be observed, we live through historical culture shifts without noticing them, just like Romans happily lived though what we view as dramatic collapse of their empire without hardly seeing anything different in their lifetime. What doesn't stop to fascinate me is how is it possible that out of the common heritage with only geographical boundaries like mountains , valleys and rivers determining the natural spread of the ancient tribes we end up with distinctly common heritage and yet so peculiar national identities, languages and customs. These lectures tell the story.

#4: The 50th Law by 50 Cent, Robert Greene

The first impression is that of being taken back into the powerful narrative not unlike my favorite Greene's “The 48 Laws of Power”, “Mastery” or “The 33 Strategies of War”. However after stating the the main idea about having no fear and confronting one's own mortality, the book persists to go back and restate essentially the same all over again. The concentration of great ideas, historical parallels and philosophy is just not the same as in the other Greene's novels. Intermixing 50's lyrics with Greene's writing style also seemed out of place and, frankly, not very flattering to the former: there's of course the sheer power in the songs and delivery, but you have to hear and feel them, to be there, but simply put on paper, the verses just seem to shallow.

#5: The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos

I started listening to this book at the same time as I picked up the most popular course on Machine Learning and the latter somewhat saved it to me. If you already know the basic fundamentals of ML, then the book is a a fun way to link the 5 “tribes” (symbologists, connectionists, evolutionaries, baysians, analogizers) together and help get some background on their evolution. However I wouldn't expect to acquire the basics of ML from this book, you will be hopelessly lost. The trouble is that the author is not a novelist, not by a long shot. His analogies seem forced and his humor is of weird geeky variety at best. Finally, I found this image to be very helpful in understanding the "boundaries" between the tribes.

#6: The 9 Types of Leadership: Mastering the Art of People in the 21st Century Workplace by Beatrice Chestnut

I would recommend to only read (or listen to) this book if you like personality psychology and somehow haven't heard about Enneagram before. I didn't and it was a great introduction and given the Enneagram connection with antiquity, Odysseus' journey and Christian deadly sins, I became very curious and immediately proceeded to classify everyone I know into one of Enneagram types. If you are familiar with Enneagram already, don't bother with this book, it reads like a work seminar manual and there's nothing more than what many website already provide on the subject.

#7: Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg, Steve Magness

Captivating intro and good summary of recommendations on pushing oneself and taking rest seriously. However, while making a promise to connect the world of professional sport with challenges of business and day to day corporate life and show how advice from professional athletes can be applied in practice, I don’t think the book has delivered in that promise; the different background of two co-authors clearly shows through the stitched content of each chapter. And the intriguing beginning of a promising book gradually deteriorated into just one of the many on the subject.