Books I Read in 2023

Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman (1/5/23) – 3.5/5
- Repetition works.
- If you’re going to be an asshole, at least be funny.
- Simple, concise messages work, even if they are wrong.

Designing Machine Learning Systems: An Iterative Process for Production-Ready Applications by Chip Huyen (1/15/23) – 4/5
- Good review of important ML system pieces, will often come back to it for ideas and resources.

Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered by Austin Kleon (1/31/23) – 4/5
- Inspiring work that tells you there is no excuse not to share your work. Perfectionism, like comparison, is a thief of joy. I need to check out the other books in his trilogy.

The Power Broker by Robert Caro (2/20/23) – 5/5
- A long masterclass in narrative storytelling. It made me feel the emotions toward this man, Robert Moses, who is arguably consequential in the creation of modern-day American public works, for good and bad.

The Neuroscience of Clinical Psychiatry: The Pathophysiology of Behavior and Mental Illness by Edmund Higgins and Mark George (4/24/23) – 4/5
- Good primer on neuroscience correlates in psychiatry, although the version I read is a little outdated now due to advancements.

Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith (4/25/23) – 5/5
- A excellent long biography on the complicated life of an artist often surrounded by myth and storytelling rather than the reality of his short, troubled, and influential life.
- I hope to write more about the lessons I derived from this book in the future.

Good Morning, Monster by Catherine Gildiner (5/31/23) – 4/5
- Decent book integrating narrative with psychological concepts. I like the vignette style of the book’s stories and it was genuinely endearing.

A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Edward O. Thorp (6/6/23) – 5/5
- One of the best books I’ve read this year and in my life.
- It has changed the way I approach the world and will be a model in how I live my life going forward, focusing on maximizing interesting problems, good people, and maximizing freedom.
  - Understand and Exploit Your Advantages.
  - Know when to quit.
  - Focus on what truly matters to you and maximize that.
  - Look for ways to adapt principles from one field into another.
  - What Problems Do I Want To Solve?

Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters by Richard Hack (7/14/23) – 4/5
- The author does a good job of synthesizing a lot of sources for a complicated man who was an American hero and scourge.
  - Beware of hero worship.
  - Money can make life easier and harder.
  - Focus
  - Beware of Overconfidence
  - People are not robots.

Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges (7/17/23) – 4.5/5
- Borges is not a straightforward writer, and this is a collection of assorted stories and essays. I need to revisit my favorite pieces over and over again to learn about his puzzles.
- I especially enjoyed:
  - “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
  - “The Garden of Forking Paths”
  - “The Lottery in Babylon”
  - “The Library of Babel”
  - “Funes the Memorious”
  - “The Immortal”
  - “The Zahir”
  - “The Wall and the Books”

The Book on Games of Chance: The 16th-Century Treatise on Probability by Gerolamo Cardano (7/29/23) – 3.5/5
- A forgotten book about the initial study of probability through games.
- It is interesting how, as we learn more and develop techniques, new disciplines emerge and set benchmarks.
- Interesting to learn about past popular games and how they evolve.

The Laws of Trading: A Trader’s Guide to Better Decision-Making for Everyone by Agustin Lebron (9/10/23) – 4/5
- Trading is an enterprise that focuses on seeing things as they are, benefiting from having a foot in the present and the future.
- Understanding probability and recognizing where people can introduce cognitive biases is important.
- Having a clear set of rules to approach complex ideas can help focus your efforts.
- Follow Your Important Insights and Follow your natural bend.
- You will be successful in arenas where you have more information than the other person, but always realize that information is discovered, not created by a person. It will soon become common knowledge.

Curse of Riches by Claire Prentice (10/15/23) – 4.5/5
- Enthralling story about a lesser-known family from the pre-Gilded Age who made their money through influence and real estate. It was a masterclass in how fear and maintaining the status quo can cripple innovation and lead to the destruction of what was built. Prisons are not just physical. The style of the piece in short date driven sections that went forward and backward worked well.

Call for the Dead by John Le Carré (12/10/23) – 3.5/5
- Instructive first novel by a thriller great, which provided ample notes about craft for my own work.
- I enjoyed the gems of British culture, post-war Britain and Europe, and the crafting of Smiley’s voice.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by E.O. Wilson (12/18/23) – 4.5/5
- A great survey of the advancement of science alongside its connections with the humanities and the mind. It makes an interesting argument about the need to integrate the disciplines for important insights, and I would like to explore this in my work.

Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield (12/19/23) – 4.5/5
- A nice kick in the butt to do the work deliberately, with focus and intention.

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins (12/20/23) – 4/5
- The penultimate guide to the basics of advertising. Still prescient almost 100 years later. We are still doing the same things discussed in this book.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli (12/21/23) – 3.5/5
- A nice primer to the big questions in Physics. Enjoyed the probability chapter in particular.
- An interesting pairing with Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré – (12/25/23) – 4/5
- A solid and economical thriller novel; could have done more to tie the eventual suspect to the crime, but I enjoyed the public (private) school punch-ups and the subtle social commentary on class.