Books

Books I've read, maybe with a sentence review after, or possibly a link to a longer review. I don't update this often.

• Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Ray Monk
  • Does philosophy actually reveal universal truths, or is it just a reflection of the inner life of the philosopher who writes it? Often the ideas of philosophers feel like the personal, quirky and temporal aesthetics of the individual, rather than the timeless frameworks for understanding the world that they claim to be. They are essentially paintings, but made of words and logic. Monk portrays Wittgenstein in this biography as always having been an intense, serious, and exacting person. Someone obsessed with logic and details and clarity yet immensely spiritual and inscrutable to most people. Monk shows Wittgenstein as an embodiment of his philosophy.
• How to Read Wittgenstein, Ray Monk
  • I learned a bit more of the historical context of Wittgenstein's work and how logic was being redefined as a mathematical field rather than as subject under the humanities, but picking up the Tractatus again after this I still don't know how to read Wittgenstein.
• Alone Together, Sherry Turkle
  • In our desire to make machines more human-like, we stoop down and make ourselves more machine-like. Written in the years of Furby and Myspace and Second Life. Lots has changed but feelings of alientation due to technology haven't.
• Why Buddhism is True, Robert Wright
• The Tao is Silent, Raymond Smullyan
  • I know Raymond Smullyan more as a logician who wrote books of logic puzzles, my favorite being To Mock a Mockingbird, which is a fun way to learn combinatory logic. A logician playing with the often contradictory ideas of Taoism was fun to read, and Smullyan has a light and un-serious style that jives well with the do-without-doing philosophy.
• Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport
• The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin
• The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin
• The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin
  • Quick paced sci-fi trilogy that I wasn't able to put down. Perfect mix of thoughtful and action-packed.
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin.
  • Wonderful, right up there with Dune and Zima Blue for me. Meant to be read slowly. "Misunderstanding others" is a big theme, so paying attention to details and multiple meanings reaps benefits. Short Review
• Atomic Habits, James Clear.
  • Uses the framework of habit formation from Charles Duhigg, and gives a lot of practical advice on how to start new habits and stop old ones. Like all self-help books, claims and results feel over-stated. Its heart is in the right place.
• The Bullet Journal Method, Ryan Carroll.
  • One piece of advice from Atomic Habits was to become mindful of how you spend your time and to keep track of when/where/how you execute your habits. One suggestion was to use the Bullet Journal method, which I decided to try out. Results pending!