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1---
2authors: Tyler Cowen
3isbn: "9781732265134"
4pages: "127"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2020-02-28
7date_finished: 2020-03-08
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2020-03-08
10---
11
12# Stubborn Attachments
13
14Learned about common sense morality and pluralism. Utilitarianism and consequentialism were also new things.
15
16Author has vision of the world he wants to live in, but it is not a strong or beautiful. I like Postman writings way more. But Cowen’s ideas are fine: sustainable growth, care more about future and rely on common sense.

1---
2authors: Jacob Mikanowski
3isbn: 978-1524748500
4pages: "400"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2024-05-10
7date_finished: 2024-05-16
8locations: Sarajevo
9date: 2024-05-16
10---
11
12# Goodbye, Eastern Europe
13
14Good book on the history of Eastern Europe. Enjoyed it, but some things that I didn't like:
15
16* too much focus on magic. It felt like Eastern Europe was the land from Magical Realism novels or the place from Kusturica films. The place where people believed in the power of saints, magic and weird things and not in science, logic, commerce and any other attributes of modern world.
17
18I like the stories author add in. I didn't like many stories that were left: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostarbeiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostarbeiter), [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executed_Renaissance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executed_Renaissance) and so on.
19* Some of "struggles" felt too dramatic in the book, especially comparing to the issues in the neighboring countries just decade before or after.
20
21* Also didn't enjoy how author randomly chose spelling for Ukrainian cities: Lviv, Kharkiv had proper Ukrainian spelling, Kyiv and Odesa had a russian one and Ternopil had Polish one. Details matter. Especially in the book about history.
22
23In general the book is good. It can be better. But what I realized that it's almost impossible to had amazing book on history.

1---
2authors: Tara Westover
3isbn: 978-0-099-51102-1
4pages: "377"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2022-05-09
7date_finished: 2022-06-18
8locations: Tallinn, Helsinki, Glasgow, New York
9date: 2022-06-18
10---
11
12# Educated
13
14Extraordinary book recommended by a friend.  It’s a first book that I was able to actually finish since the big war in Ukraine started in February 2022.
15
16The book started very difficult for me. There were many scary little stories of physical accidents. I expected things to go more and more terrible (physically) for the author during her childhood. In my personal life I’m more scared of physical damage caused by other people. Somehow, I feel like I can withstand psychological. It’s tough, but it always feels that as long as I’m physically healthy I can work on psychological and mental state. So reading the book I was worried that more and more physical abuse would follow. This worrying made reading of this book a bit stressful.
17
18But to be honest, I don’t want to reflect on the topic of family or psychological challenges here. Just read a book, and my own reflections I will document sometime later.
19
20What surprised me in this book was how simultaneously similar and foreign Tara’s background was to my own. She grew up in the rural religious America. Which was million miles away from the America of New York City or Los Angeles. The same was true for me growing up in rural Ukraine. London, NYC - those places were so far and unattainable to me as a child.
21
22But what surprised me was the definition of poorness. As per her description she grow up poor and without much money - which is true when she compared herself to her peers. But when I was reading this descriptions I still cannot believe how much money she and her family had. They had many cars and could afford many things. Even Tara herself started working part time when she was 16 and she has hundreds of dollars for herself. She went to college with 1200 dollars when she was 17(or some similar age) - for her it was very little amount of money. But for me having 1200 when I was 17 was impossible dream. I had no tools to earn so much money back then.
23
24I think those differences were the things that I was thinking in the background. How many things are not absolute but relative. Like, tara compared herself to her peers and she was poor and unlucky. And I was reading her account and keep thinking - materially she was pretty well off.

1---
2authors: Aldous Huxley
3isbn: 978-0-06-085052-4
4pages: "152"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2016-09-17
7date_finished: 2016-09-27
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2016-09-27
10---
11
12# Brave New World
13
14Great dystopia written in early XX century. Surprisingly the world in the last 30 years become very close to the one described by Huxley.
15
16The best book that explains Brave New World is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

1---
2authors: Haruki Murakami
3isbn: "9781101974520"
4pages: "267"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2020-02-20
7date_finished: 2020-02-23
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2020-02-23
10---
11
12# Men Without Women
13
14Collection of short stories. They all kind of similar but I liked them and writing style.
15
16I am not sure I can relate to the characters much. I think main characters have two things about them: loneliness and sex.
17
18I have read it with interest, because I don’t think I have ever met people like that in my own life.

1---
2authors: Noah Kagan
3isbn: "9780593539781"
4pages: "218"
5rating: ★ ★ ★
6tags: Business
7date_started: 2024-07-27
8date_finished: 2024-08-04
9locations: Gdynia
10date: 2024-08-04
11---
12
13# Million Dollar Weekend
14
15I think the book is ok. I just didn't match with author style/personality, so it was more a "no" for me.
16
17But I think content is pretty good.

1---
2authors: Milan Kundera
3isbn: "9780571224388"
4pages: "320"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6tags: sex, adultery
7date_started: 2017-05-16
8date_finished: 2017-05-23
9locations: San Francisco
10date: 2017-05-23
11---
12
13# The Unbearable Lightness of Being
14
15First time I've read Kundera. Very engaging read. Storyline was interesting. I enjoyed historical context too. Questions raised in the book were hard. I also liked Kundera's philosophical meditations, that reminded me of Thomas Mann style.
16
17Timing was ironic. I've read this book, watched the film and in few months I went through a breakup and divorce (connection between people in real life and some characters in the book was *funny*).

1# readings

1---
2authors: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
3isbn: 978-0812973815
4pages: "366"
5rating: ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2016-03-06
7date_finished: 2016-09-06
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2016-09-06
10---
11
12# The Black Swan
13
14Nassim Taleb seems like a very smart person but:
15
16* book was extremely long, especially to present one main idea
17* the style is quite arrogant, which I didn't enjoy at all
18
19I liked that he quoted a lot of people in his book, but because of 2 reasons stated above I'm not looking forward to read his other books.  It was a very painful experience and took me half a year to finish it.

1---
2authors: William Irvine
3isbn: "9780195374612"
4pages: "326"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2014-11-10
7date_finished: 2014-12-01
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2014-12-01
10---
11
12# A Guide to the Good Life
13
14Great book. Recommended by a friend. Enjoyed it very much. It was my intro into stoicism.

1---
2authors: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David Duncan
3isbn: "9780062565235"
4pages: "288"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2021-11-05
7date_finished: 2021-11-21
8locations: New York
9date: 2021-11-21
10---
11
12# Competing Against Luck
13
14It was ok. Maybe 2-3 interesting stories, and good examples how to think about Jobs To Be Done.
15
16But I think the book can be way shorter. Also, few month later I remember nothing from it. So seems to be not actionable and not relevant for me personally.

1---
2authors: Neil Postman
3isbn: 978-0-679-73421-5
4pages: "201"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6tags: technology, medium
7date_started: 2016-12-04
8date_finished: 2016-12-10
9locations: San Francisco
10date: 2016-12-10
11---
12
13# Conscientious Objections
14
15Collection of essays on different topics from education, childhood, politics, technology, television etc. Postman, as always, provides insights into our culture (mostly American) and suggests some practical ideas how to prevent negative ongoing trends. As always he uses wisdom of sages, thinkers, writers, and philosophers from the past to help us understand current social issues.
16
17His essays and observations draw a picture of quite sad future. A lot of this predications are already fulfilled, so Postman is unfortunately was very accurate in them which he poses as warnings for us.
18
19However, what I liked about this book is that he tries to stay optimistic. He reminds us that civilized society is very vulnerable and we should pay attention to dangers. And he tries to provide us with a mindset how to do just that.

1---
2authors: Milan Kundera
3isbn: "9780060932145"
4pages: "313"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2021-08-13
7date_finished: 2021-08-22
8locations: New York
9date: 2021-08-22
10---
11
12# The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
13
14Good book. It feels like if you've read one book from Kundera, you've read all of them.
15
16Same techniques, same topics. Mix of philosophy, history of Eastern Europe, reflections about West and sex.

1---
2authors: Alberto Cairo
3isbn: "9780393358421"
4pages: "254"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2021-10-25
7date_finished: 2021-11-04
8locations: New York
9date: 2021-11-04
10---
11
12# How Charts Lie
13
14Good, simple book.
15
16Not very technical. High level overview type of book.

1---
2authors: Muhammad Yunus
3isbn: 978-1-61039-757-5
4pages: "288"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2018-06-23
7date_finished: 2018-07-04
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2018-07-04
10---
11
12# A World of Three Zeros
13
14Somehow I just learned about Muhammad Yunus. He is a true inspiration now. I can't believe he was focusing on poverty, unemployment and environment for so many years before it became mainstream. And it seems like he developed new models for enterprises before anyone else.

1---
2authors: M. Mitchell Waldrop
3isbn: "9781732265110"
4pages: "512"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2020-04-15
7date_finished: 2020-05-24
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2020-05-24
10---
11
12# The Dream Machine
13
14Incredible book.
15
16Basically tells the whole history of computing starting from pre-WWII years, through John von Neumann and Alan Turning years, invention of LISP, Arpanet, Xerox PARC, TCP/IP, Unix and interactive computing and finally internet.
17
18It just connects all the great people together: Norbert Wiener, von Neumann, Noam Chomsky, JFK, Alan Kay, Vint Cerf, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Steve Jobs, Al Gore. And all connected via work of J. C. R. Licklider.

1---
2authors: Tony Judt
3isbn: B00499DRLM
4pages: "244"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2022-12-22
7date_finished: 2023-01-06
8locations: Mexico City
9date: 2023-01-06
10---
11
12# The Memory Chalet
13
14Absolutely love this book. It’s been many years since I’ve read another book from Tony Judt and now I’m confused - why did I take such a long break.
15
16The only thing I didn’t like is his idealization of train system in Europe. Idea of trains is amazing, I love it a lot. However in both 2021 and 2022 I tried to travel around Europe by trains and it is not that simple. Connections are easy only between some big hubs. Some countries not connected at all. In some countries trains are extremely expensive - they take more time and more money than flights. Try traveling from Madrid to Lisbon. Or from Kraków to Paris. Or from Spain to Eastern Europe. Or try getting to Slovenia from Poland. Milan to Paris sounds simple - not really, it will cost you fortune even with one stop in Switzerland.
17
18Outside this topic of trains if was very interesting to read his ideas on communism, Eastern Europe, French philosophy, New York, identity politics, UK and US, comparison of various education system and different generations.
19
20His thinking and writing is so short and sharp. I really like it and reading this book gave me a lot of energy. Ver similar to the period when I was reading Neil Postman books.
21
22PS I was blown away that he learned Czech and have met Eastern European icons of the 80-90s like Václav Havel and love that he talked about Czesław Miłosz and Milan Kundera.

1---
2authors: Mark Noble
3isbn: B0B141JTT1
4pages: "303"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2022-12-12
7date_finished: 2022-12-14
8locations: New York
9date: 2022-12-14
10---
11
12# Boleyn Boy: My Autobiography
13
14Simple read. Great book for every West Ham fan. Read an account of all that happened to West Ham for the past 18 years. Book has a very nostalgic feel to it.

1---
2authors: Serhii Zhadan
3isbn: 978-966-14-7841-0
4pages: "232"
5rating: ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2019-01-19
7date_finished: 2019-02-10
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2019-02-10
10---
11
12# Anarchy in the Ukr
13
14My first book from Zhadan. I like his poetry and songs, but I didn't like novel at all.
15
16Maybe I didn't understand it, but for me a lot of scenes from this book were too painful to read but it seemed like Zhadan romanticized his experiences and stories. Things that I wanted to forget from my past - those are the things that he cherished. As I said, maybe I misunderstood him, but book didn't meet my expectations.

1---
2authors: Tania Maliarchuk
3isbn: 978-617-679-330-4
4pages: "250"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2022-06-20
7date_finished: 2022-07-09
8locations: New York
9date: 2022-07-09
10---
11
12# Забуття
13
14Good book. Loved the idea of combining two parallel stories: one about author’s life and one about real historical figure of Ukrainian struggles for independence in the early years of XX century.
15
16I have never heard about Viacheslav Lypinsky before, so that was good education for me.

1---
2authors: Seth Godin
3isbn: B00L0F01NK
4pages: "102"
5rating: ★ ★ ★
6tags: ideas
7date_started: 2018-05-18
8date_finished: 2018-05-22
9locations: San Francisco
10date: 2018-05-22
11---
12
13# We Are All Weird
14
15I like Seth, but this is blog post type of book: easy and disposable reading.

1---
2authors: Mykola Khvylovy
3rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
4date_started: 2020-02-15
5date_finished: 2020-02-17
6locations: San Francisco
7date: 2020-02-17
8---
9
10# Сентиментальна історія
11
12Small book with three short stories.
13
14First one was *Сентиментальна історія* - I hated it. The language used was strange, the topic was strange, the ending was sad.
15
16Very nihilistic story.
17
18It was the first one I've read from Khvylovy since school. I didn't understand what is all this hype about him being the best writer of that generation.
19
20But then I've read two other short stories *Іван Іванович* and *Вальдшнепи* - that was very different level of writing.
21
22Very modern - author was present himself, similar to Thomas Mann. The style was funny and brave. And the story line is interesting. Reading these two stories I realized why he was killed by Soviets.
23
24Romantic person who supported Revolution and socialism but in 10 years of Soviet rule got disillusioned. He even called out Stalin in *Іван Іванович*. What a brave act. That couldn't only end in the death of the author during the red terror.

1---
2authors: Andrew Wilkinson
3isbn: "9781637744772"
4pages: "256"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2024-07-16
7date_finished: 2024-07-20
8locations: Warsaw
9date: 2024-07-20
10---
11
12# Never Enough
13
14Great book in a sense that it's interesting to read. Reflections are not profound, but I guess they shouldn't be. Andrew is still just 37 and is figuring out his life.
15
16But the way he wrote the book was extremely engaging- I finished it in 4 days. I knew part of his story almost from the start, but I definitely didn't realize that only in 9 years he went from agency owner to billionaire while meeting people like Charlier Munger, Warren Buffer, Bill Ackman and Derek Sivers.

1---
2authors: Bertrand Russell
3isbn: 978-0-415-47358-3
4pages: "128"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
6date_started: 2016-05-19
7date_finished: 2016-05-30
8locations: San Francisco
9date: 2016-05-30
10---
11
12# Bertrand Russell's Best
13
14I’ve only discovered Bertrand Russell in 2016.  He immediately became an inspiration.

1---
2authors: Ulas Samchuk
3isbn: "9667631834"
4pages: "632"
5rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6tags: Ukraine
7date_started: 2015-01-15
8date_finished: 2015-01-22
9locations: San Francisco
10date: 2015-01-22
11---
12
13# Volyn
14
15My second novel from Samchuk. Very engaging.