Title | Author | Thoughts | Rating |
---|---|---|---|
The Sound and The Fury | William Faulkner | I wish I had read an overview of the book prior to spending months frustrated with Benjyโs section. | ๐๐๐ |
Absalom, Absalom | William Faulkner | A frustrated ___ attempting to relive its legendary past. | ๐๐๐๐ |
Light in August | William Faulkner | A mini-epic of sorts, with twisting storylines. | ๐๐๐ |
As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | I canโt understand the individual sentences, the closer I read the less I understand. I can only understand paragraphs at a time. | ๐๐ |
Demons (The Possessed) |
Fyodor Dostoevsky | โEvery nation has its own idea of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many nations start having common ideas of evil and good, then the nations die out and the very distinction between evil and good begins to fade and disappear. Reason has never been able to define evil and good, or even to separate evil from good, if only approximately; on the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pitifully; and science has offered the solution of the fist.โ Connections with โThe Righteous Mindโ by Haight and the โrationalist delusionโ. | ๐๐๐๐ |
The Idiot | Fyodor Dostoevsky | โThe Russian people, as soon as they reach the shore, as soon as they believe itโs the shore, are so glad of it that they immediately go to the ultimate pillars.โ | ๐๐ |
Notes from Underground | Fyodor Dostoevsky | Self-destructive, self-pitying, bitter man from underground. The tone of this book cuts deep. | ๐๐๐ |
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich | Alexander Solzhenitsyn | A convictโs worst enemy is another convict. | ๐๐๐๐ |
One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcรญa Mรกrquez | Fantastical epic that spans generations. Are you an Aureliano or a Josรฉ Arcadio? | ๐๐๐๐๐ |
The Trial | Franz Kafka | Shame, guilt, bureaucracy. | ๐๐๐ |
Cloud Atlas | David Mitchell | First two books contain fancy prose, must read with dictionary. Followed by corny mystery novel, comedic relief escape and mediocre dystopia of corporate Korea. Last book is post-apocalyptic Hawaii written in spoken vernacular, slightly more intelligible than Huck Finn. Books strung together with weak connections, ends unexcitingly with jumbled message for reader. | ๐ |
Fight Club | Chuck Palahniuk | Chaotic narrative. Abundance of great quotes. | ๐๐๐ |
Paradise Lost | John Milton | Finished after eight months of reading. After reading barely anything the first two months, I resolved myself to read ten minutes every morning, and began to make serious progress. Even so, epic poetry is difficult to digest. I could only read at most a few pages in one sitting. An entincing, Romantic Satan, fallen from Heaven, plans his revenge on God and Man. Milton makes Satan relatable to the reader. Notable quotes:
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Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | I found rich Igbo culture and tradition, demonstrating cultural invariants โ archetypes. The hypermasculine Okonkwo supresses the feminine and perishes, emasculated. I begin to understand Achebeโs criticisms of Conrad, though I disagree with most of them. |
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Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | Marlow gazes at the savages:
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | James Joyce | Blog Post
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Lord of the Rings: Trilogy | J. R. R. Tolkien | The trilogy took me half a year to read. | ๐๐๐ |
Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | One of the best openers Iโve read: โLolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.โ |
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The Hobbit | J. R. R. Tolkien | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Life of Pi | Yann Martel | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy | ย | ๐๐ |
The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoevsky | โEverything is permitted.โ | ๐๐๐๐ |
The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Crime and Punishment | Fyodor Dostoevsky | ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
A Farewell to Arms | Ernest Hemingway | ย | ๐๐ |
For Whom the Bell Tolls | Ernest Hemingway | It tolls for thee. Me obscenity en la obscenity. | ๐๐๐ |
Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck | ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Dubliners | James Joyce | RIP Parnell. | ๐๐๐ |
East of Eden | John Steinbeck | timshel - contrast with The Grand Inquisitor | ๐๐๐๐๐ |
Flowers for Algernon | Daniel Keyes | Heartwrenching | ๐๐๐๐๐ |
Slaughterhouse-Five | Kurt Vonnegut | Did not really understand it, will not rate | ย |
The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas (pรจre) | โJe suis Edmond Dantรจs!โ | ๐๐๐๐๐ |
The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | Funniest book Iโve read, as well as one of the most poignant. | ๐๐๐๐๐ |
The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | ย | ๐๐ |
Death of a Salesman | Arthur Miller | ย | ๐๐ |
Great Expectations | Charles Dickens | ย | ๐ |
Tale of Two Cities | Charles Dickens | ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
Animal Farm | George Orwell | ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger | One angsty kid | ๐๐๐ |
The Handmaidโs Tale | Margaret Atwood | ย | ๐๐ |
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | ย | ๐๐ |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | Mark Twain | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Enderโs Game | Orson Scott Card | ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
A Hitchhikerโs Guide to the Galaxy | Douglas Adams | ย | ๐๐๐ |
The Old Man and the Sea | Ernest Hemingway | ย | ๐๐๐ |
2001: A Space Odyssey | Arthur C. Clarke | ย | ๐๐๐ |
1984 | George Orwell | ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury | โIt was a pleasure to burn.โ | ๐๐๐๐ |
Lord of the Flies | William Golding | ย | ๐๐ |
To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee | ย | ๐๐ |
Title | Author | Thoughts | Rating |
---|---|---|---|
Symposium | Plato | The form of beauty surpasses any manifestation of it. | ย |
Crito | Plato | ย | ย |
Apology | Plato | ย | ย |
Beyond Good and Evil | Friedrich Nietzsche | One must remember to read philosophy and not simply Nietzsche. | |
Manโs Search for Meaning | Viktor E. Frankl | Happiness should not be pursued, it must ensue โฆ a reason to live. Pursue meaning. | ๐๐๐๐ |
The Prince | Niccolo Machiavelli | Be bold like Agathocles. | ๐๐๐ |
The Republic | Plato | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Title | Author | Thoughts | Rating |
---|---|---|---|
Guns, Germs, and Steel | Jared Diamond | ย | Currently Reading |
Your Inner Fish | Neil Shubin | Much more connected with ancient life forms than we realize. Lots of analogies between genes. Multicelluarity, body, skulls, limbs, middle ear, bipedal, brains. | ๐๐๐ |
Nudge | Richard H. Thaler Cass R. Sunstein |
Set good defaults. Reading this after Thinking, Fast and Slow did make it seem like a simpler version of the latter. |
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Thinking, Fast and Slow | Daniel Kahneman | โConfusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusionโand it is the substitution that makes us believe a past experience can be ruined. The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self.โ Is the act of memory not an experience to be optimized itself? |
๐๐๐๐๐ |
The Righteous Mind | Jonathan Haidt | How terrifying is a teleological view of morality!
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Sapiens | Yuval Noah Harari | ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
The Grand Design | Stephen Hawking | ย | ๐๐๐ |
Physics of the Impossible | Michio Kaku | Interesting, but far-fetched. | ๐๐๐ |
A Brief History of Time | Stephen Hawking | One of the books that motivated me to study physics. |
Title | Author | Thoughts | Rating |
---|---|---|---|
On China | Henry Kissinger | For those who donโt understand China, but want to. | |
So Good They Canโt Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love | Cal Newport | โDonโt follow your passionโ | ๐๐๐๐ |
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It | Chris Voss, Tahl Raz |
An emotional approach to negotiation. Personally useful. | ๐๐๐๐ |
Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win | Jocko Willink, Leif Babin |
There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. | ๐๐๐ |
The Big Short | Michael Lewis | Putting credit default swaps as โmortgage bondsโ in synthetic CDOs, betting on thin air, sold to fools at AIG. | ๐๐๐๐ |
Title | Author | Thoughts |
---|---|---|
Howl | Allen Ginsberg | ย |
T. S. Eliot | ย | |
Hamlet | William Shakespeare | โWhat a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?โ |
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | T. S. Eliot | ย |
ไนฆๅ | ไฝ่ | ๆๆณ | ่ฏ็บง |
---|---|---|---|
็บข็ซ็ฐไธ็ฝ็ซ็ฐ (Red Rose, White Rose) |
ๅผ ็ฑ็ฒ (Eileen Chang) |
ย | ๆญฃๅจ้ ่ฏป |
้้่ฎฐ (The Golden Cangue) |
ๅผ ็ฑ็ฒ | ย | ๐๐ |
ๅพๅไนๆ (Love in a Fallen City) |
ๅผ ็ฑ็ฒ | ๆไบไฟ่ฟไบไธคไธช่ช็ง็ไบบ | ๐๐๐ |
่พนๅ (Border Town) |
ๆฒไปๆ (Shen Congwen) |
็ฅ็ถ็็ฌ่ฏๅคๅค็ | ๐๐๐ |
ๅ
ๅผ (Brothers) |
ไฝๅ (Yu Hua) |
ย | ๐๐๐ |
ๅดๅ (Fortress Besieged) |
้ฑ้ไนฆ (Qian Zhongshu) |
ๆดๆฐ๏ผ่ฏปๅๆๅฉ | ๐๐๐๐ |
็บข้ซ็ฒฑๅฎถๆ (Red Sorghum Clan) |
่ซ่จ (Mo Yan) |
็ฒ็ณ็ๆ็ฌ๏ผ้ข็น็ๆถ้ด็ฉฟๆขญใ | ๐๐๐ |
ๅไธช่ฏๆฑ้็ไธญๅฝ (China in Ten Words) |
ไฝๅ (Yu Hua) |
โๆฅไธๆฅๆฃ้ฑ็็ญๆ
ไปฃๆฟไบๆฟๆฒป็็ญๆ
โ โไบบไปฌๅฏนๆธ ๅฎ็ๆๆ่ถ ่ฟๅฏนๆณๅพ็ไฟกไปปโ |
๐๐๐๐ |
้ช้ฉผ็ฅฅๅญ (Rickshaw Boy) |
่่ (Lao She) |
ย | ๐๐๐๐ |
้ฟQๆญฃไผ (The True Story of Ah Q) |
้ฒ่ฟ
(Lu Xun) |
โๅฏ็ฌ๏ผโ | ย |
็ไบบๆฅ่ฎฐ (A Madmanโs Diary) |
้ฒ่ฟ
|
โๆ่ชๅทฑ่ขซไบบๅไบ๏ผๅฏไป็ถๆฏๅไบบ็ไบบ็ๅ ๅผ๏ผโ | ย |
ไผผๆฐดๆตๅนด | ็ๅฐๆณข (Wang Xiaobo) |
ๅ่ฟฐๆททไนฑๆ่ถฃๅฆ็ฌฌไบๅไบๅ่งใ | |
ไธๅ่็ซ | ็ๅฐๆณข |
ย | ๐๐๐ |
้ป้ๆถไปฃ (The Golden Age) |
็ๅฐๆณข |
ๅฅๅญๅฆๆตทๆๅจใๆฆไธๆฆไผๅคงๅ่ฐใ | ๐๐๐๐ |
ไธไฝ I (The Three-Body Problem) |
ๅๆ
ๆฌฃ (Liu Cixin) |
ๅ้ขๆฏๅพๆ็น่ฟใ | ๐๐๐ |