Jason's Reading (rated okay)

I tried to like this book. I went into it with fairly low expectations (because I feel like Newport’s books tend to have high overlap with each other) and was pleasantly surprised by the first two principles presented. They didn’t feel 100% applicable to someone like me, who has some autonomy in my work but not full autonomy, but there are some nuggets of wisdom in there worth considering. …

This story was just plain depressing. I don’t know what else I was expecting – it’s about a group of pioneers that largely starve to death after becoming snowbound on their way to California – but reading about their struggles was painful. It was especially hard to see all the little things that could have gone differently and might have dramatically changed the group’s outcome for the better. But the book was interesting and well-written, so if you’re feeling up for a particularly tragic story, I’d recommend it.

Wow, talk about a long, verbose book. The story was interesting but moved very slowly. I did eventually come to appreciate the pace as a metaphor for the whaling journey – drawn out and mostly uneventful, but with bits of action scattered throughout. …

My wife and I are expecting, and she’s hoping to do a natural birth this time; I’m preparing myself to support her in that. This book had some useful basic information about the birth process, but I didn’t particularly like it. The tone felt… childish? Almost condescending in how dumbed-down and shallow everything was. Still a good starting point, though, and I’m glad to have read it.

This story was very interesting, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the telling of it. The dozens of named characters and jumpy timeline made things confusing, and the level of detail was sometimes boring. I think I would have preferred a less in-depth recounting of the disaster that focused more on the perspectives of a few key people. Having said that, I recognize that it’s a complex story and congratulate Higginbotham on communicating its magnitude and effects.

An interesting collection of articles pulled from the Low-Tech Magazine website. I particularly liked the chapters about using old laptops and the need for a typewriter revolution. I was a bit disappointed that “low-tech” seemed to be pretty narrowly defined as “low energy use” throughout most of the book. De Decker does mention a few of the other benefits of low-tech, such as simplicity and openness, but in general he’s very focused on power consumption.

This book puts into words many of the things that I’ve been feeling as an artificial intelligence skeptic. It explains the danger of trusting important decisions to computer systems that are black boxes, un-understandable even by their creators; highlights the ways that AI further concentrates power into the hands of relatively few; and even touches on how AI can strip our lives of what makes them meaningful. …

This book was another gift from my brother, but I didn’t particularly like it. Although Davis clearly demonstrates that prisons are often hellish places unfit for human inhabitation, I was disappointed by her failure to present a compelling, concrete alternative; the last chapter, titled “Abolitionist Alternatives”, merely mentions some guiding principles for creating new solutions and concludes with a feel-good forgive-the-people-who-killed-your-child story. …

Although I enjoy learning about the history of computing, I didn’t love this book. I struggled to keep track of the many people described in the book, and the story seemed to lack a cohesive flow. The supposed tie-in to the counterculture is rather weak, too; Markoff describes the radical political opinions and recreational drug use of several pioneers of personal computing, but the connection doesn’t feel quite strong enough to merit the subtitle. …

Although I found this book interesting, it wasn’t really my style. Its lack of resolution felt a bit depressing, and I think that was intentional, but I prefer something that provides at least a little hope. I should mention that I read the book in Spanish, which I speak and read well but not with native fluency. While I don’t think that I missed anything important, I may not have caught every little detail or appreciated the writing style as much as I would when reading in English. …

I’ve always sort of wished I could be a cowboy, so this book was a fun read for me. It was interesting to learn more about the struggles of trying to keep a ranching operation going and about the difficult rodeo life. The book seemed a bit repetitive in its description of similar events across several years, though.

This book was full of interesting stories and valuable insights – that humans naturally assume others are truthful (and that’s a good thing), for example, or that divining how someone feels/thinks without knowing them well is nearly impossible. However, the book did not feel particularly cohesive to me; it wasn’t always clear what point Gladwell was trying to make, and some of the stories didn’t really seem to fit. I enjoyed reading Talking to Strangers, but it didn’t contain much of the practical advice for interacting with others that I’d hoped for.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Chris Knight’s remarkable 27-year-long stay in the woods of Maine. In fact, this book made me want to escape from the world and go camping for a bit myself. I found the author’s asides about the power of solitude and why some people seem to need far less social interaction than others particularly interesting, and I plan to read more about those topics soon. The end of the book was a bit anticlimactic and felt too abrupt to me, though.

This book helped me better understand the values and origin of the free software movement. Williams clearly depicted Stallman’s firm dedication to free software as an ethical issue, and I came to respect the consistency with which he has fought for his values. …