Reading Log
This is a log of books I’ve read. The idea is to keep track of books I liked or disliked and when I last read them, in case I want to re-read them later. I started it in 2021 so it’s definitely not complete.
I read non-linearly and with no obligation to finish a book, just like if books were Twitter. (I mean, think about it: books are the original social media.) I just pick up any book I feel like reading on that day and start reading the parts that seem interesting. If a book is boring, I just drop it. I have a lot of books that I haven’t read yet and maybe I never will. I don’t care. The point of a personal library is to have plenty of books to choose from so you actually get excited enough to grab a book and read. (Anyone who’s visited a public library knows this feeling.) What’s the value of having a library where you’ve read every book? That’s just storage for old paper.
Each year is split in two categories:
- Cover-to-cover: Books I read cover-to-cover. (Except the Foreword. I never read the fucking Foreword; if it had actually useful information the author would have written it himself and made it part of the book. The Foreword is the equivalent of a skippable YouTube ad, basically.)
- Partially read: Books I’ve only partially read so far. Maybe I read a few chapters, maybe I’m still reading them, maybe I have no plans on ever finishing them.
2021
Cover-to-cover
- The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb: 5/5. Life-changing.
- Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt: 4/5. This should be a mandatory read for every high school student.
- The Dao of Capital - Mark Spitznagel: 4/5.
- Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb: 4/5.
- Safe Haven - Mark Spitznagel: 4/5.
- That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen - Frederic Bastiat: 4/5.
- The Big Short - Michael Lewis: 4/5.
- How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes: 4/5.
- Tail Risk Hedging - Vineer Bhansali: 3/5.
- Computer Graphics from Scratch - Gabriel Gambetta: 4/5. Super fun little book!
Partially Read
- Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell: 5/5. Amazing. Thomas Sowell might be one of the greatest minds of our time.
- The Linux Programming Interface - Michael Kerrisk: 5/5.
- Letters from a Stoic - Lucius Annaeus Seneca: 4/5.
- CrazyBusy - Edward Hallowell. Haven’t made my mind about a rating yet.
- The Children of Men - P.D. James: 4/5. Great so far!
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll: 3/5.
- Sleep Smarter - Shawn Stevenson: 3/5.
- Burnout - Herbert Freudenberger: Haven’t made my mind about a rating yet.
- Architecture: Form, Space & Order - Francis D. K. Ching: Haven’t made my mind about a rating yet.
- Game Programming Patterns - Robert Nystrom: 2.5/5. I expected this to be a bit more interesting, honestly.
- Graphic Shaders - Mike Bailey & Steve Cunningham: 4/5. I’ve only read a few chapters so far but I’m liking it.
- Algorithms on Strings - Maxime Crochemore: 3/5. The data structures are beautiful but this guy has the most confusing notation ever and explaining things clearly is definitely not one of his strengths.
- Jewels of Stringology - Maxime Crochemore & Wojciech Rytter: 3/5.
- Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess - Bobby Fischer: 3/5.
- Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D - Fabien Sanglard: 4.5/5. This is ended up being much more interesting than I expected.
- Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari: 2/5. The content is interesting but the humanity-hating tone of the author just ruins it for me. This guy really seems to hate humans. I don’t think I’ll be able to stomach finishing it.
- Greenlights - Matthew McConaughey: 1/5. Absolute garbage. Seems like a book actually written by a Hollywood actor. I don’t know what I was expecting.