Another good quarter for reading! Well ahead of my soft goal to consume 50 books this year. I have begun counting the journals I read since I was in catchup mode (HBR, MIT), they do require a decent investment of time.
(Here are my Q1 2024 Reads)
Here are a couple of quick picks of the things I read or listened to this quarter:
Scifi/Dystopia
Death’s End (3 Body Problem, Book 3)
Finished the Three Body Problem series I started last quarter. This book – Death’s End – saw whole thing come to an existential end of days scenario, spanning a mind bending timeline, physics and end-of-days. Absolutely loved the whole thing. Very occasionally the translation from the original Chinese feels like it goes a bit wonky, but overall I can’t recommend this highly enough. It was overall better than the Netflix adaptation, which skips about the books. My wife rattled through it as well a few weeks behind me and was similarly impressed.
Honorable mention to Madd Adam the 3rd book / end of the Margaret Atwood trilogy of the same name. End of world biotech disaster. There was a lot going on in this book and some difficult themes but I am glad I read it. Surprisingly prescient for a book written in 2013, themes of AI, environmental disaster, the gap between have / have not and educated / uneducated.
Business / Productivity
I read another book in this series some years ago – The Tao of Coaching – and for some reason or another this came to my feeds and I bought it 2nd hand. It was brilliant, in fact I highly recommend this and the other book for those embarking on leadership journeys. It’s a short novella, which is a bit peculiar (and shows its age) but the summaries at the end of each chapter build a suitable framework. It’s digestible and you can finish it in one or two sessions. I have the final book on my shelf ready to read at some point (The Tools of Leadership)
This is quite a deep book and one of those that is quite reflective. 4000 weeks is (roughly) our lifespan (roughly 80 years). On the one hand this is a personal productivity book but in actual fact the key message is You’ll never be able to master your time. The more efficient you are, the more things pile up. It urges you to think about time in a different way (“finitude”).
It was very popular over lockdown this book and it is occasionally associated with the quiet quitting and similar movements. But really it is saying you should be prioritizing limited goals. This is similar to themes in books like Essentialism and Cal Newport’s writing which advocate “less is more”. Listen to a discussion on Bookworm podcast.
I really liked it!
I came across this book accidentally, it was a free listen on Audible Plus, but in fact it turned out to be great. There is nothing particularly profound about it other than saying, you need a big plan (5y, 10y) then essentially (to use Agile terminology) you need a 12 week sprint towards achieving milestone on that plan. Similar to the message in 4000 weeks, you should be laser focused on fewer, meaningful goals within that 12 week (1 quarter) timeline. Then you need your own personal KPIs (measurement) to keep yourself accountable.
it’s quite an old book this it turned out but was succinct, gave practical advice (blocking time) and at its heart is advocating for breaking big hairy goals into manageable chunks. Nothing wrong with that. Good discussion on the book at Bookworm Podcast.
Come back again at the end of September for Q3 reading.
Here is my full Q2 list: (19 titles)
| Finished | Title | Pages | Format | Author | Category | |
| 01/04/2024 | Glucose Revolution | 320 | Audiobook | Jessie Inchauspe | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 20/04/2024 | IronDad | 270 | Audiobook | Russel Newell | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 23/04/2024 | Gravitas | 256 | Audiobook | Caroline Goyer | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 24/04/2024 | Death’s End (3Body Book 3) | 736 | Kindle | Cixin Liu | fiction | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| 29/04/2024 | Harvard Business Review May/June | 150 | Journal | HBR | non fiction | |
| 05/05/2024 | The Tao of Motivation | 120 | Book | Max Landsberg | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| 16/05/2024 | Give and Take | 384 | Audiobook | Adam Grant | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 20/05/2024 | Harvard Business Review March/April | 150 | Journal | HBR | non fiction | |
| 23/05/2024 | Towards a Digital Renaissance | 288 | Audiobook | Jeremy Silver | non fiction | ⭐️ |
| 30/05/2024 | Madd Addam (MaddAdam Book 3) | 496 | Book | Margaret Atwood | fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 03/06/2024 | Four Thousand Weeks | 288 | Kindle | Oliver Burkeman | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| 05/06/2024 | The Psychology of Money | 240 | Audiobook | Morgan Housel | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 06/06/2024 | TED Talks Storytelling | 72 | Kindle | Akash Karia | non fiction | ⭐️ |
| 09/06/2024 | The Redemption Of Time (3Body Book 4) | 368 | Kindle | Baoshu | fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 23/06/2024 | Harvard Business Review Jan/Feb | 150 | Journal | HBR | non fiction | |
| 28/06/2024 | The 12 Week Year | 208 | Audiobook | Brian Moran, M.Lennington | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| 27/06/2024 | Winning | 240 | Audiobook | Tim Grover, | non fiction | ⭐️ |
| 28/06/2024 | The Almanack of Naval Ravikant | 244 | Kindle | Eric Jorgenson | non fiction | ⭐️⭐️ |
| 29/06/2024 | MIT Technology Review May/Jun | 80 | Journal | MIT | non fiction |