How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler - I come back to this book constantly and I absolutely love it. Highly recommended. 5/5.
Deep Work by Cal Newport - Could be summed up in a blog post. 3/5 (for the message; lower otherwise - maybe 2-2.5/5)
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount - Could be summed up in a blog post, but I think he makes a point on cold calling - if you need to do it, suck it up and do it. And that about sums it up. 2.5/5 (message is decent and he does offer some tips)
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke - Liked it, but unsure that I'll continue. 3.5/5.
White Fang by Jack London - Enjoyable and descriptive. Had to power through, though. 3.5/5
Treasure Island by RLS - Absolutely loved it. Now I need to power through the 800ish episodes of One Piece. 4/5
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green - The story moves pretty fast. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford - Khan as a historical figure fascinates me and I enjoyed this book. Don't know if it's just me, but Weatherford does seem to handwave Mongol atrocities. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Quest for God by Jack Weatherford - Again, enjoyable. 3.5/5
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - Charming and enjoyable story. 4/5
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - Pretty sure this is the first book I ever read that's written from an animal's POV. I liked it. 4/5
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (Penguin Classic) - I really liked it. Helped me understand a bit more about Norse mythology. 4.5/5
Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang - I read this earlier in the year; it's about a guy who asked people ridiculous things in an effort to see if they'd say yes or no. I believe the thesis boils down to "Don't be afraid to ask; people say yes more often than you think." Was an enjoyable read. 4/5
My Antonia by Willa Cather (Oxford World Classic) - Really good read and not that long of a book. 4.5/5.
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger - As the title implies, it's about the Apollo 8 mission. Same guy who wrote the biography on Neil Armstrong. 3/5.
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling - Charming short stories that Kipling told his daughter until she died. 3.5/5
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain - Was assigned this in high school but didn't read it then. Read it now. I missed out; it's a good book, but I think it's relatively boring until Tom starts going out with Huck a bit more. 3.5/5
The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame - Best book I've ever read on friendship and its importance. 4.5/5
Only surprises for me were Apollo 8, which I didn't like as much as I liked the Neil Armstrong biography; Tom Sawyer, in that I liked it; and that Deep Work and Fanatical Prospecting seemed a lot more bloated than they should've been. Besides that, I'm happy I didn't read any books that I didn't like, but I suppose I didn't take many risks either.
Deep Work is excellent and likely a very useful read for most of the programmers / engineers / (data) scientists ... pretty much any "information worker"!
Another +1 from Deep Work. The main takeaway for me was the following quote:
"We spend much of our day on autopilot, not giving much thought to what we are doing with our time.
This, is a problem. It's difficult to prevent the trivial from creeping into every corner of your schedule if you don't face without flinching your current balance between deep and shallow work"
I tried his pretty extreme recommendation to schedule every minute of every day (see chapter 'Rule #4' or 6:30:30 in the audiobook), my summary below:
-> I use a 4"x6" lined post-it note pad and block out 30 minute/block blocks throughout the day
-> Interruptions are scheduled for future blocks (although occasional mandatory interruptions
of course occur from time to time), and I edit the post-it note throughout the day
-> At the end of the week I do a post-mortem and review which tasks slipped to the next week and recap what happened
I've found a surprising amount of distractions lurking throughout my day that I've been able to eliminate. Scheduling your day is also really compatible with Agile development as you can easily answer why your JIRAs slipped into the next sprint, what your blockers were, etc.
I've also read the the Weatherford book about Genghis Khan and I agree he downplayed the atrocities during the conquest, but I agree with your rating - I don't think it's a deal breaker. When studying history we have to remember that before WWII, wars of conquest were the normal expected behavior of states, as were the atrocities that come with sacking of cities. Once you've read about a couple of events, you've kind of read about them all, unfortunately. The mongol conquests however were on a different scale than most, but there is quite a bit of nonsense out there about the casualty counts. Weatherford is a fairly short book, and I wish he spent a bit more time confronting it and separating fact from fiction.
Nevertheless, it remains true that atrocities and conquests were the historical norm: what separates different societies is how they rule after achieving power. It's there that we see huge differences from culture to culture. For example, I've recently seen loads of people compare Alexander & Genghis Khan to Hitler... Certainly true of their conquests - true of everyone with the skills to pull it off before WWII - but wildly wrong once they achieved power and began organizing their empires. Weatherford did a great job of explaining that missing half of the story for the Mongols, even though he gives a disappointing analysis of the human cost of building the empire.
Deep Work by Cal Newport - Could be summed up in a blog post. 3/5 (for the message; lower otherwise - maybe 2-2.5/5)
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount - Could be summed up in a blog post, but I think he makes a point on cold calling - if you need to do it, suck it up and do it. And that about sums it up. 2.5/5 (message is decent and he does offer some tips)
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke - Liked it, but unsure that I'll continue. 3.5/5.
White Fang by Jack London - Enjoyable and descriptive. Had to power through, though. 3.5/5
Treasure Island by RLS - Absolutely loved it. Now I need to power through the 800ish episodes of One Piece. 4/5
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green - The story moves pretty fast. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford - Khan as a historical figure fascinates me and I enjoyed this book. Don't know if it's just me, but Weatherford does seem to handwave Mongol atrocities. 4/5
Genghis Khan and the Quest for God by Jack Weatherford - Again, enjoyable. 3.5/5
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - Charming and enjoyable story. 4/5
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - Pretty sure this is the first book I ever read that's written from an animal's POV. I liked it. 4/5
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson (Penguin Classic) - I really liked it. Helped me understand a bit more about Norse mythology. 4.5/5
Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang - I read this earlier in the year; it's about a guy who asked people ridiculous things in an effort to see if they'd say yes or no. I believe the thesis boils down to "Don't be afraid to ask; people say yes more often than you think." Was an enjoyable read. 4/5
My Antonia by Willa Cather (Oxford World Classic) - Really good read and not that long of a book. 4.5/5.
Apollo 8 by Jeffrey Kluger - As the title implies, it's about the Apollo 8 mission. Same guy who wrote the biography on Neil Armstrong. 3/5.
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling - Charming short stories that Kipling told his daughter until she died. 3.5/5
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain - Was assigned this in high school but didn't read it then. Read it now. I missed out; it's a good book, but I think it's relatively boring until Tom starts going out with Huck a bit more. 3.5/5
The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame - Best book I've ever read on friendship and its importance. 4.5/5
Only surprises for me were Apollo 8, which I didn't like as much as I liked the Neil Armstrong biography; Tom Sawyer, in that I liked it; and that Deep Work and Fanatical Prospecting seemed a lot more bloated than they should've been. Besides that, I'm happy I didn't read any books that I didn't like, but I suppose I didn't take many risks either.