I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last updated: October 2025
⭐ = favorites
On the bookshelf:
Red Rising
Barbarian Days
How to Make a Few Billion Dollars - Brad Jacobs
Read this one on vacation. Thought his perspective on systems, visualization, and deal making was fairly interesting.
Sword of Kaigen
Like an adult Avatar the Last Airbender. I found the world building to be interesting, the actually plot of the story is fairly unsettling but keeps you engaged the whole time.
Sapiens
I get why people like it. However, while I was reading it, I couldn’t get over the feeling that the author was glossing over massive assumptions that could weaken some of the assertions he makes. I found the way the topic of religion was approached fairly interesting.
Today, when we realize that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry.
The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’
There is poetic justice in the fact that a quarter of the world, and two of its seven continents, are named after a little-known Italian whose sole claim to fame is that he had the courage to say, ‘We don’t know.’
The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen ⭐
Really enjoyed this story. I found the characters all so interesting and the plot to be extremely well presented. A lot of lessons here about friendship, perspectives, and the realities of war, tyranny, and sacrifice. The anecdote with the squid was so weird. I would love to know what was going through Viet Thanh Nguyen’s head when he wrote that.
4 Hour Workweek
Conjure up your dream life, reverse engineer it, and execute. It’s slightly outdated now in the age of AI, but I think the general principles are still relevant to most. The author asks you to question the assumptions you make about your financials / time management and proposes a new framework for achieving the life you want to live. I wasn’t able to finish it (it gets a little repetitive) but got what I needed from it.