What I Read In April

In addition to cycling and coffee, another passion of mine is reading. I’m usually reading multiple books at a time and try to average about five per month. I share my “book of the month” internally as a part of Affirm’s book program, which lets employees order a new book each quarter paid for by the company.

We’ve had a busy few months here at Affirm to kick off 2019, which included the launch of our partnership with Walmart, a round of funding and the addition of several new executive hires. This meant I didn’t have as much time to dedicate to reading as I would have liked, so I’m happy that I was finally able to dig into some of the reads that have been waiting for me. Here’s some of what I read in April:

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

I recently had dinner with a few of the early engineers from PayPal, two of whom I’ve known and been friends with since college and another who I met through the first two. While we’ve known each other for more than 20 years, it’s pretty rare for us to catch up in person these days. We bonded early on through our shared affinity for science fiction and naturally, the genre came up as a topic during our dinner conversation. Enter The Last Question, which some at the table had read and highly recommended. I left dinner knowing I had to read it and immediately added it to my list. The Last Question is a famous sci-fi short story, and quite possibly one of the best sci-fi stories ever written. Since it is a short story I won’t give too much away, but Asimov’s degree of forward-thinking is something to behold. This story was written the very same year the team that created the first transistor won its Nobel Prize, making Asimov’s foresight into future moral and technological challenges of computing all the more stunning.

Artemis by Andy Weir

This is another work by Andy Weir (author of The Martian), and it’s a very fun read that I would classify as part of the guilty pleasure section of my personal library. Artemis takes place in the city of the same name, humanity’s first off-world colony, on the Moon -- where life is hard, unless you count yourself amongst the rich. Jazz, the book’s female protagonist, makes her living as a courier who helps smuggle contraband to her clients. She is also a welder and generally all-around bad-ass. The story shifts to Jazz’s opportunity to score an even bigger “job” that has the potential to get her out of debt and into the life she aspires to live. Unfortunately for her, she may have gotten in a bit over her head, and the future of Artemis could be at stake as a result.

This was a fun read with a solid storyline, and Weir’s attention to extreme technical detail is unparalleled. This book recently received the green light for a movie adaptation so we should get the chance to see its world in action soon enough.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

It wasn’t all science fiction for me this month, as my appetite for behavioral psychology reading remains strong. This month I finally got to reading The Power of Habit, a book published a few years ago that compiles a bunch of great academic neuroscience and applied psychology research on habit formation. It includes clear reporting and interviewing work by its author, Charles Duhigg, whose day job is reporting for The New York Times. The book uses the now-standard formula of beginning each chapter with an anecdote that’s later substantiated by research, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting (or useful). Plus, the bits detailing Paul O’Neill’s transformation of Alcoa are priceless reading for a CEO trying to build a mission-driven company.

What are you reading this month? Have you pulled a classic or favorite off the shelf recently and discovered something new while re-reading? Tell me more!