One-Liners About My Recent Reads.

When We Cease to Understand the World – Benjamín Labatut
_{I was weirded out a few times by the fictional narrative and had to check what actually happened historically. The most interesting takeaways for me were actually about AI: (1) Writing historical metafiction is probably a genre AI will be good at, and (2) the fate of Alexander Grothendieck (or Grigori Perelman) makes me uneasy about AI safety.}

The Machinery of Life – David S. Goodsell
_{A wonderful illustration of cellular and molecular structures and the mechanisms of life. In general, I have little intuition for scale and orders of magnitude at the cellular level, so this was very helpful. An excellent blog post (Cells Are Very Fast and Crowded Places by Ken Shirriff) pointed me to this book.}

Shaman: A Novel of the Ice Age – Kim Stanley Robinson
_{A very vivid narrative of early modern humans in Ice Age Europe. It’s amazing how the story seems realistically consistent with what life would have been like for them, without our modern perspective. Not quite on par with his Mars trilogy, but Robinson has now become my favorite science-fiction writer.}

Sparks of Genius – Robert Root-Bernstein
_{This wasn’t as strong as I had hoped. I didn’t come away with much that felt new.}

Children of Time – Adrian Tchaikovsky
_{Has some clever ideas, though a little cheesy. I read it after seeing jumping spiders courting in our yard, which made the spider parts especially fun to notice.}

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
_{Fun read, and a great example of a micro-genre (Quadraturin, House of Leaves, The Library of Babel, even back to the Cretan labyrinth) built around impossible architectures. I can’t help feeling they’re all metaphors for consciousness.}

All Systems Red – Martha Wells
_{Similar vibes to Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Neither resonated with me as much as their reputation suggested and they felt a bit overhyped.}

Red Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson
_{Astonishing book. I loved the back and forth between Ann and Sax on terraforming Mars: “The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind…”}

Green Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson
_{The Scientist as Hero chapter is one of the most truthful descriptions of a scientist I have read in this genre. Coincidentally, while reading this book I was flying over the Grand Canyon, which made the Martian landscape descriptions feel even more profound.}

The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
_{My first non-fantasy read on medieval life in Europe — pairs well with the movie Becket, though I liked the latter much more.}

Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers – Leonard Koren
_{Short book that helped me appreciate some of the Wabi-Sabi subtleties in Huntington Garden.}

Poor Charlie’s Almanack – Charles T. Munger
_{I shied away from reading this at first, thinking it was a cliché. But oh man, Munger was sharp and full of unexpected insights. For a taste, check out Talk Two: A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom.}

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World – David Deutsch
_{I first tried reading this book in freshman college unsuccessfully. This was my second attempt, but I still couldn’t bring myself to finish it despite a lot of people liking it.}

A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins – Gareth Harney
_{Much more engaging than I anticipated. Romans carried portable mints into battle to pay their troops with freshly coined propaganda.}

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage – Alfred Lansing
_{A compelling narrative of the trans-Antarctic expedition, highlighting Shackleton’s exceptional judgment of his men’s mood and his dynamic optimization of their roles within his survival strategy.}

The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets – Thomas R. Cech
_{Before AI, determining the 3D shape of RNA was a painstaking challenge. The discovery of ribozymes overturned the belief that only proteins could catalyze reactions. Life may have begun with self-replicating RNA.}

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? – Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
_{A bit too pessimistic for my taste, focusing too much on today’s tech limitations rather than the wilder possibilities of space settlement with post-AGI, fully gene-edited humans.}

A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains – Max S. Bennett
_{An accessible look at how the brain works like a computer, great for those with little to no background in neuroscience like me, while drawing clear parallels to AI algorithms.}

When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi
_{A memoir that made me reflect on my mortality and what gives my life meaning.}

Ayn Rand and the World She Made – Anne Conover Heller
_{I was surprised by how much of her experience as an immigrant resonated with me. It’s also evident how her life shaped her Objectivist philosophy.}

Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
_{Still strikingly relevant today—though a dose of Peter Singer helps keep the balance sharp.}

The Laws of Human Nature – Robert Greene
_{My biggest takeaway is that I need to read about Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition.}

Red Seas Under Red Skies: Gentleman Bastard, Book 2 – Scott Lynch
_{My favorite chapter was “Reminiscence: By Their Own Rope.”}

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel – Kim Stanley Robinson
_{Believable predictions of life in a changing climate, a gripping oppening, and bold ideas for fixing the future.}

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality – Eliezer Yudkowsky
_{Better than the original.}

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human – Siddhartha Mukherjee
_{From gene therapy to regenerative medicine.}

The Gene: An Intimate History – Siddhartha Mukherjee
_{A journey through clever experimental designs that unravel the code of life.}

How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going – Vaclav Smil
_{Steel, cement, plastic, and ammonia production consumes 17% of global energy.}

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World – Jack Weatherford
_{A deeper insight into how the Mongols perceived peasant life and how it shaped their treatment of them.}

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – Reza Aslan
_{Exploring the political landscape of first-century Judea and offering a characterization of the historical Jesus.}

The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness – Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
_{Debatable approach to self-liberation and happiness, presented through a Socratic dialogue.}

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives – Steven Levy
_{How Google’s unique culture and innovative thinking have transformed our daily lives.}

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made – Jason Schreier
_{A behind-the-scenes journey into the chaotic world of video game development, revealing the harsh realities of crunch time.}

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science – J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
_{A science-driven approach to home cooking that made me see just how clueless I was in the kitchen.}

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly – Anthony Bourdain
_{Left me regretting I never experienced the chaos of working in a kitchen as a teenager. Btw, 80% of restaurants fail within their first five years of operation.}

Greenlights – Matthew McConaughey
_{The fascinating and unconventional path of a life well-lived.}

Open: An Autobiography – Andre Agassi
_{Professional tennis is a solitary journey, both on and off the court.}

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: A Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing (Eleventh Edition) – Burton G. Malkiel
_{Saves ordinary investors a great deal of time and money.}

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future – Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
_{Startups should aim to create monopolies to build a lasting future.}

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources – Javier Blas, Jack Farchy
_{An eye-opening exposé on the powerful traders who control the global flow of commodities.}