Books
My goal at the end of 2023 was to get back into reading. I am happy with the outcome; while it wasn't always consistent, I read a ton, and I am looking forward to this year to continue the trend.
Here is a list of some of the best ones. There are a some new books as well as books that were sitting on the shelf for a while that I was finally able to get to.
Math
If you are getting into math for some reason, like say a major development in Artifical Intelligence, it is sometimes helpful to have an accessible overview of the space. Much of math was discovered to solve particular and often interesting problems. These books do an amazing job of showing how math matches up with reality.
Ben Orlin:
Math with Bad Drawings - Illuminating the ideas that shape our reality
Change is the Only Constant: The Wisdom of Calculus in a madcap world
Biology/Science
The creator of the popular YouTube channel Kurzgesagt is also apparently obsessed with the human immune system, which is awesome. He has put together a really beautiful book in many ways. The ability to communicate and simplify the insane complexity of the immune system in a way that is never boring but utterly fascinating is worth the price of admission alone. Highly recommend.
Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive by Philipp Dettmer
The Catalyst is a look into how RNA plays a much bigger role in biology than was previously thought of and led to many medical breakthroughs, told by the scientisht himself.
How Life Works is a very interesting read, and I haven't grokked all of it. Probably need to read it again and then again, it has so much in it but basically it presents, much like The Catalyst, a new perpestives on how we view life. Again moving away from the DNA centric view that biology has been in for too long.
How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball
The next book lays out in depressing details how a large chunk of science research is failing. In our highly optimized world, science, primarily the act of publishing as also been optimized. With tremendous pressure for scientists to not only publish, publish often and only publish citable postiive results. Leading to a state where an astonishing number of papers just can't be replicated at all. Remember the power pose thing? Probably bullshit. That case and many more are laid out in this very good but also depressing book.
Creativity
The two next books have similar messages and present challenges to spark creativity by becoming a better observer. One of my new favorites, go to any place you have been many times and try to find 5 things you never noticed before. It is pretty crazy how many things have always been there but you just never noticed.
How to be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum by Keri Smith
This last one is a very beutiful book where the author talks about various aspects of creating through illustrated comic style drawings.
The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity by Grant Snider
Various
In the early days of sea exploration, there was a serious problem. Sailors had methods to tell what their latitude was but no method to figure out their longitude, which is kinda important when going from the old world to the new. This was a big deal and in 1714 England put up 12 mil in todays money to anyone that could solve it. This book goes through the whole history and was an interesting read, not just for the science but the persisentence of the people trying to solve this problem.
The next book was a fun read. Basically the author's premise is that puzzles have been benefical to him as a person so embarks on a deep dive into puzzles of all types. Also apparently there is a jigsaw puzzle competition.
There are a lot of books in the productivity, self-help, life advice space type books. It has been awhile since I read it but it feels in the vibe of the Subtle Art of not giving a Fuck.
That is all to say that I don't think that the overall ideas are all new but delivered with a very interesting perspective, which makes them stick more. I really enjoyed this book and it is a quick read, or if you read it as the book suggests just a chapter a day.
There was a interesting sub culture of hackers known as Phreakers. They hacked the phone system. This is pre-internet days and the largest network at the time was the phone system. They found various ways to exploit it for fun and profit. Getting free calls and general hijinks. I was getting into computers at the tail end of this era but this book was a real interesting read.