Goodreads "Read" list of books
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/lnmangione
Note: The Goodreads account seems to have been hacked or otherwise taken over by another person, since new books were added to his "to read" list on December 10 and 11 - Luigi was arrested on December 9.
| Author | Title | Read | Added | Rating | Review | Other notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dr. Seuss | The Lorax | 2024-01-27 | ★★★★★ | |||
| Aaron Hillegass | Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide | 2024-01-25 | ★★★★★ | |||
| Andrew Doughty | Hawaii - The Big Island Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook | 2024-01-25 | ★★★★★ | Never thought I'd feel compelled to review a travel guidebook, but this book is fantastic. Honest reviews. Hilarious author. Full of hidden gems. | ||
| Andrew Doughty | Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook | 2024-01-25 | ★★★★★ | Never thought I'd feel compelled to review a travel guidebook, but this book is fantastic. Honest reviews. Hilarious author. Full of hidden gems. | ||
| Thomas H. Cormen | Introduction to Algorithms | 2024-01-24 | ★★★ | |||
| George Orwell | 1984 | 2024-01-24 | ★★★★ | |||
| Jon Kleinberg | Algorithm Design | 2024-01-24 | ★★★★ | Cleanest, most intuitive breakdown of algorithmic thinking I've encountered. Should be mandatory reading for any mathematician or computer scientist | ||
| Ryder Carroll | The Bullet Journal Method: Track Your Past, Order Your Present, Plan Your Future | 2024-01-23 | 2023-03-03 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Kelly Starrett | Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance | 2023-02-23 | ★★★★ | |||
| Tim Urban | What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies | 2023-02-21 | ★★★★★ | I believe this book will go down in history as one of the most important philosophical texts of the early 21st century | ||
| Stephen "Steve-O" Glover | A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Terrible Decisions | 2023-02-28 | 2022-12-17 | ★★★ | Rather than showing us his life, Steve-O mostly tells us his reflections on events and preaches the lessons we should learn from them. The stories lack dialogue and specific moments, making them generally unengaging. Which is a shame, because Steve-O has lived a wild life full of unique experiences. Overall, I’m not sure I really learned anything. The lessons were all pretty generic and would’ve carried more weight with better storytelling. Further, I wish the lessons themselves were more interesting? Steve-O has been through intensive rehab programs - for sex, drugs, etc - over several years. Admirably, he’s managed to stay sober for over a decade and now seems to have achieved a very healthy relationship. I would’ve been interested in hearing some of the specific tools and strategies he’s learned over the years through these programs. Clearly they’ve helped him, and this is an area where he’s truly an expert. I love Steve-O. His life is full of wild stories, and his addictive personality is one I relate to. But this book was just OK. Maybe my expectations were too high given how much I enjoyed his first book - which I’d recommend instead. | |
| Timothy Ferriss | The 4-Hour Workweek | 2023-01-11 | 2022-09-16 | ★★★★ | I found "The 4-Hour Work Week" to be an incredibly worthwhile read. It offers lots of useful advice on how to live and work, although it does have its flaws. For example, much of the content is fluff, and the backstory of the author’s BrainQUICKEN supplement company may not be particularly appealing. Additionally, the idea of working only 4 hours a week is likely an exaggeration, and the book's suggestions on travelling nomadically and capitalizing on “geo-arbitrage” virtual assistants may not be suitable for everyone Regardless of these shortcomings, the book is full of wisdom. It challenges readers to question conventional wisdom, evaluate their true priorities and determine whether their current trajectory aligns with their goals. Additionally, it provides valuable tips on optimizing daily work and life by encouraging readers to re-evaluate their day-to-day processes to improve effectiveness and eliminate distractions. Overall, it challenges readers to rethink their approach on both a macro- and micro-level. All of the suggestions in this book, from questioning traditional career advice to re-evaluating the minutea of everyday living, stem from Tim’s disdain for simply accepting things because “that’s the way they are.” I believe that’s why this book resonated with me so strongly, as I’ve shared this frame of mind since I was a kid. I’m reminded of a long-standing debate at my childhood dinner table. Whenever we’d eat steak, I would use my knife in my left hand and my fork in my right, which would infuriate my mother. She’d remind me to cut with my right hand since I was right-handed and to switch my fork to my right hand for each bite. When pressed for a reason, she’d reply “because that’s how to cut”. Dissatisfied, I’d press further. She’d reply “because that’s proper manners”. As a six-year old, I found this to be the most pointless and inefficient process in the world, and I’d voice this opinion. Why would I switch hands every single bite to maintain some arbitrary convention? The final reply: “One day you’re going to meet a nice girl, and when you go out to dinner with her you’ll need to use proper manners”. My response then, and still a fundamental belief to this day, is that anyone who cares about something so small and insignificant, is maybe not someone I want to spend my time with. Note for 2023 At the end of each chapter, the book lists several websites and digital tools that may have been the latest-and-greatest in 2007, but today are either commonplace or obsolete. Regardless, much of the general advice is still relevant and universal. For example, “timedriver.com” may no longer be an operational website, but the advice to automate and avoid time-consuming back-and-forth scheduling is as useful as ever. The book clearly shows it’s age though, including a quote from Bill Cosby that “civilization had too many rules” for him… My chapter summaries: https://drive.google.com/file/d/180Ea... | |
| Loren Cordain | The Paleo Diet Revised: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat | 2022-08-15 | 2022-08-04 | ★★★ | ||
| Malcolm Gladwell | Outliers: The Story of Success | 2022-11-08 | 2022-07-11 | ★★★ | ||
| David Goggins | Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds | ★★★★ | Goggins is extreme (and clearly unhappy), but in science we learn from the outliers. Good fuel to kickstart your system out of a rut, if you need it. Eventual balance must be achieved though after the initial crisis has been handled. | |||
| Cathryn Jakobson Ramin | Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery | 2022-06-12 | 2022-05-29 | ★★ | ||
| Angela Duckworth | Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | 2022-07-15 | 2022-05-23 | ★★★★ | My written notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18_mi... | |
| Stuart McGill | Back Mechanic | 2022-02-21 | ★★★★★ | |||
| Theodore John Kaczynski | Industrial Society and Its Future | 2021-07-18 | ★★★★ | Clearly written by a mathematics prodigy. Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life. It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out. He was a violent individual - rightfully imprisoned - who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary. A take I found online that I think is interesting: "Had the balls to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere and at the end of the day, he's probably right. Oil barons haven't listened to any environmentalists, but they feared him. When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it's not terrorism, it's war and revolution. Fossil fuel companies actively suppress anything that stands in their way and within a generation or two, it will begin costing human lives by greater and greater magnitudes until the earth is just a flaming ball orbiting third from the sun. Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn't possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense. These companies don't care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive? We're animals just like everything else on this planet, except we've forgotten the law of the jungle and bend over for our overlords when any other animal would recognize the threat and fight to the death for their survival. "Violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators." | ||
| Steve Stewart-Williams | The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve | 2024-01-23 | 2021-05-21 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Jim Mellon | Moo's Law: An Investor’s Guide to the New Agrarian Revolution | 2024-01-23 | 2021-05-11 | ★★★★★ | Free money AGNMF:OTC US | |
| Malcolm Gladwell | Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know | 2021-01-15 | ★★★ | |||
| Catherine Price | How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life | 2020-12-01 | ★★★★★ | This little book packs a punch. My chapter summaries: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YiWt... | I've entertained the idea of taking a technology haitus a few times, but I've struggled to decide the best way to do that: A one-hour no-technology window each week? A one-time weeklong phone-retreat? Seems like the author has spent a lot of time trying to answer that exact question. If I decide to ever try that hiatus, this should absolutely be my guide. Marking as a top 25 to-read | |
| Phil Knight | Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike | 2021-03-23 | 2020-11-24 | ★★★★ | I really enjoyed the last two biographies I read - Trevor Noah's memoir and the Elon Musk biography - and would love to read another. This one's recommended by Bill Gates (who's yet to disappoint me with a recommendation) and the top rec from Paulina's boss (a self-proclaimed connoisseur of memoirs) This one's a no-brainer. Marking as a top 15 to-read | |
| David Vandermeulen & Yuval Noah Harari | Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 1 - The Birth of Humankind | 2021-03-30 | 2020-11-18 | ★★★★ | Top 10 to-read: A great way to re-read/solidify sapiens. Engaging graphics turn complex subject matter into a light read | |
| J.D. Vance | Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis | 2020-12-27 | 2020-11-12 | ★★★ | ||
| Trevor Noah | Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood | 2020-11-10 | 2020-10-31 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Seth Stephens-Davidowitz | Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are | 2020-12-09 | 2020-09-13 | ★★★★ | ||
| James Clear | Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones | 2024-01-23 | 2020-07-08 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Dan Ariely & Jeff Kreisler | Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter | 2020-11-05 | 2020-07-07 | ★★★ | ||
| Aldous Huxley | Brave New World | 2023-06-13 | 2019-10-30 | ★★★★★ | “A gramme is always better than a damn” “I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.” “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.” | |
| Gary Paulsen | Hatchet | 2019-10-30 | ||||
| Orson Scott Card | Ender's Shadow | 2019-10-16 | ||||
| Orson Scott Card | Ender in Exile | 2019-10-15 | ||||
| Michael Matthews | Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body | 2019-09-?? | 2019-05-18 | ★★★★ | The introduction to weightlifting. Fantastic, clear content. -1 star: too infomercial, too aesthetics-focused My written notes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fxje... | |
| J.K. Rowling | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | 2019-01-15 | 2019-01-12 | ★★★★★ | ||
| J.K. Rowling | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | 2019-01-11 | 2019-01-06 | ★★★★★ | ||
| John Flanagan | The Ruins of Gorlan | 2019-01-05 | ||||
| J.K. Rowling | Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | 2019-01-06 | 2019-01-04 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Douglas Adams | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | 2021-03-10 | 2018-12-25 | ★★★ | ||
| Derek Yu | Spelunky | 2020-07-27 | 2018-11-26 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Tim Urban | The Elon Musk Blog Series: Wait But Why | 2018-11-25 | ★★★★★ | |||
| Tim Urban | The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence | 2015-02-15 | 2018-11-25 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Matthew Walker | Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams | 2018-11-25 | ||||
| Yuval Noah Harari | Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind | 2024-01-23 | 2018-11-25 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Jeff Hirsch | The Eleventh Plague | 2018-11-28 | 2018-11-25 | ★★★ | ||
| J.R.R. Tolkien | The Hobbit, or There and Back Again | 2018-11-24 | ||||
| Suzanne Collins | Mockingjay | 2018-11-24 | ||||
| Suzanne Collins | Catching Fire | 2018-11-24 | ||||
| Suzanne Collins | The Hunger Games | 2018-11-24 | ||||
| Gene Luen Yang, Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko | The Promise | 2018-12-10 | 2018-11-24 | ★★★★ | ||
| Hugh Howey | Wool Omnibus | 2020-05-15 | 2018-11-22 | ★★★★ | ||
| Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | The Little Prince | 2018-01-?? | 2018-11-13 | ★★★★ | ||
| Michael Greger | How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease | 2018-11-13 | ||||
| Orson Scott Card | Xenocide | 2017-09-28 | ||||
| Orson Scott Card | Speaker for the Dead | 2017-08-02 | ★★★★★ | |||
| Orson Scott Card | Ender's Game | 2017-08-02 | ||||
| Philip K. Dick | Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | 2017-08-02 | ★★★ | |||
| Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner | Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything | 2020-07-25 | 2017-07-27 | ★★★ | ||
| Dan Ariely | Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions | 2020-07-08 | 2017-06-27 | ★★★★★ | ||
| Stephen "Steve-O" Glover | Professional Idiot: A Memoir | 2019-02-08 | 2017-06-19 | ★★★★ | ||
| Erik Christian Haugaard | The Boy and the Samurai | 2017-06-05 | ||||
| Ashlee Vance | Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future | 2020-10-17 | 2017-05-19 | ★★★★ | ||
| Simon Singh | The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography | 2017-05-14 | ★★★★ | |||
| Andy Weir | The Martian | 2017-05-06 | 2017-05-14 | ★★★★★ |