Bookshelf

What's Going On Here?

One of the first things that I find myself doing whenever I'm visiting a friend is leafing through some of the books that they have on a nearby bookcase or tucked away on their desk. It usually allows me to find one new aspect of their personality or interests that I hadn't known before and leads to a deeper, fuller understanding of the person.

This is my attempt at giving you the opportunity to do the same (virtually). Take what you will from these recommendations.

Fiction

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

  • This book proved to me the power of representation in the media that you consume. I've never seen characters with a family history as close to mine as this book describes. Seeing myself in the characters made the heart-wrenching book affect me that much more deeply.
  • Leonie is one of the most flawed and realistic main characters that I've ever read. She might be one of my all-time favorites.

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

  • One of the problems from math class that steered me towards my future career (dynamical systems) was The Three Body Problem. This math problem proves to be very important in the context of this book and is a great, realistic form of science fiction.
  • This book is the first of a trilogy, and I was hooked after reading the first few chapters of this!

Circe by Madeline Miller

  • This book follows Circe, the enchantress and daughter of Helios who intersected with several of the stories in Greek mythology. You'll have plenty of delightful "I remember this from Literature class" moments while reading this and yet still won't be able to predict where it will end.
  • Dr. Miller has fleshed Circe out from a footnote in Greek mythology to a deep and incredibly relatable character who was impossible to predict. This character was masterfully constructed.

Nonfiction

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

  • I think that this helps us understand the biases that frequently impact our decision-making and (while it may be impossible to overcome all biases, as Mr. Kahneman notes) design our habits or work processes to remove them.
  • I haven't read all of this book (I think I'll treat it as a resource that I'll dip into whenever I want to challenge or clarify my decision-making). It is quite long, but written decently well.

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

  • A "more practical version of Thinking, Fast ans Slow" according to one of my friends. Ms. Duke offers a ton of great strategies for addressing human biases when attempting to learn in environments with a lot of uncertainty (sounds like life, doesn't it?).
  • If you take anything from this book, then the first chapter on resulting should be it. This concept is invaluable while evaluating your decisions.

Never Lost Again by Bill Kilday

  • A personal look into the many people that created Keyhole (the company that would later become Google Earth and Google Maps) and the importance of organizing geographic data.
  • This book not only explains how Keyhole used several strategies to gain leverage in an industry with incumbents but it also showed how technology changes the human experience (and sometimes can cause political conflict!).