Books I liked

These are notes on some of the books I’ve enjoyed. I figure this is a good way to help me internalize them. Please let me know if you read any, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Nonfiction

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Read this if you want to make your gatherings with other people more meaningful.

My notes on The Art of Gathering

This is one of the best non-fiction books i’ve read in years. It is entertaining but also actionable, and has a different perspective than most of the books I read. Its lessons apply to many things beyond creating impactful gatherings. Some of my major takeaways were:

• Always have a perspective for why your gathering exists. What is its purpose? What are you trying to accomplish by getting this group of people together? Even if it’s as simple as “for old friends to catch up,” having a thesis helps make every decision easier.
• Be a benevolent dictator at your gatherings. People want to be led, and if you don’t take leadership and guide the group in service of your gathering’s purpose, someone else will guide the group in service of a different purpose. So for example, if you are having a gathering for the purpose of having old friends catch up, that may mean people aren’t allowed to bring significant others — you should enforce this, in a gentle, but firm way.
• Have memorable rules for your gatherings. This reminded me of Ben Horowitz’s advice about building companies. Having memorable rules helps unite people, makes the gathering memorable and puts them out of their usual mindset. Some examples of rules include “no one can serve their own food,” “everyone gives a toast before dinner,” “phones go in the middle of the table” “everyone wears white” etc. By making rules explicit, people actually feel more comfortable and there is more equality than when rules are implicit.
• Setting is very important and you should consider doing things to surprise your guests with the setting to jog them out of their usual routine. For example, if you’re having a dinner party that would usually take place around a table, consider having guests eat on the floor.
• Make the gathering an enclosed space: for example, seat people around a circular table, instead of on either end of a rectangular one.

Burn Rate by Andy Dunn

Read this if you are interested in business and want to hear an honest, emotional, empowering story about mental health.

My notes on Burn Rate

This was one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read. I would have read the story of the founding of Bonobos on its own, it is an interesting and innovative company and since I have worked in the space I liked learning about the origins of the DTC movement.

But Dunn’s candor and thoughtfulness about his experiences with bipolar disorder made the book incredibly touching and engaging, way beyond a normal business book. Hearing about his first manic episode in college was so relatable; he was a high-achieving kid at Northwestern who was partying a lot and dating someone seriously for the first time and it was hard to tell what was normal college behavior and what was madness until, all of a sudden, it wasn’t.

The rest of the book is similarly honest and compelling. He beautifully illustrates the highs and the lows of entrepreneurship weaving together with bipolar disorder.

Something that struck me is that even though he was desperately afraid to acknowledge his diagnosis, even to himself, everyone he eventually opened up to (including the board of directors of Bonobos!) were supportive and understanding. And things he feared for so long, like telling his Board or his girlfriend about his condition, were over in mere moments — the fear was so much worse than the actual event. This has certainly been true in my life and is something I try to remember.

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Read this if you want a fast, simple, powerful framework for improving your life and are open to something mystical.

My notes on The Four Agreements

The theory of this book is that humans are socialized as children to have many “agreements” or ingrained beliefs about the world and that many of these agreements cause us suffering. It proposes four agreements to follow to reduce this suffering which are:

• Be impeccable with your word: Do not gossip or lie. The things you say impact you and the people around you and you want to only say the sort of thing that you want to bring into your life.
• Don’t make assumptions: Relationships can be much better if instead of making assumptions about what the other person is thinking or what they want, you ask them. Humans aren’t very good at seeing reality, this practice can get you closer to reality.
• Don’t take anything personally: Focus on what you can control and realize that other peoples’ actions are wrapped up in their own struggles. He takes this to the extreme (“even if someone calls you stupid, don’t take it personally. It has nothing to do with you.”) I don’t know how to feel about this, but I don’t see much downside in making an effort to remove your ego from interactions with others.
• Always give your best: If you give less than your best you will feel guilt and regret which causes suffering. If you give more than your best you will burn out. I certainly find that when I am at work, if I am stressed it can usually be remedied by shutting out distraction and working hard for a while.

I liked the simplicity of this book and how unequivocal it is in its prescriptions. It feels religious in nature but with the promise of salvation in this life and not a future one. Much of it felt closely linked to the Buddhist principles that are taught by contemporary meditation teachers. I’ll be curious to see how long these ideas stick with me.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

Read this if you’re in the mood for an incredibly well-researched story about a business empire, the dysfunctional family that runs it, and the horrific opioid epidemic it helped cause.

My notes on Empire of Pain

• It was transformational for the pharmaceutical industry to start marketing products like consumer goods. For example Valium was marketed for a wide array of ailments, to housewives etc. The Sackler brothers helped pioneer this marketing.
• There was an idea that doctors’ judgment couldn’t be swayed my marketing or sales tactics. This is clearly wrong and many doctors overprescribed opioids as a result of aggressive sales and marketing
• The Sacklers owned interests in competitive firms, industry publications, gave money to tons of universities; they had many conflicts of interest. Reminds me of the founder of incredibly powerful hollywood agency CAA Michael Ovitz’s motto: “no conflict, no interest.” This can be a great business strategy but is morally dubious especially in a field like medicine.
• Money tore the Sackler family apart; the brothers barely talked towards the end of Arthur’s life
• Pharma companies have strategies to move the public from one drug to a slightly different drug to extend the time they’re selling things on patent
• Oxycontin was marketed and widely believed to be non-addictive. This is terrifying
• The data on which doctors are prescribing which drugs is very valuable and is used in a way similar to how CPG firms use retail data. Pharma companies call on doctors in high-prescribing regions, give special attention to doctors who were prescribing a lot. Purdue could also see which doctors were clearly writing fraudulent prescriptions, and mostly encouraged this

So Good They Can’t Ignore You, by Cal Newport

Read this if you are early in your career or are looking to find more meaning in your career. One of the best frameworks I’ve found for thinking about how to build a career and life that you will enjoy.

My notes on So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Newport wrote this when he was finishing a computer science PhD at MIT and preparing to enter the academic job market. He was facing a lot of career uncertainty and wanted to understand the factors that lead to fulfilling careers. Since writing this book, he’s gone on to write several more popular books in addition to being a professor, and he appears to have a lot of autonomy and success, which gives his framework some credibility in my mind.

Autonomy is an extremely important factor in meaningful, fulfilling work. But, it’s a mistake to try to for too much autonomy before you’ve built up something valuable to offer the world (for example by trying to become a full time travel blogger from scratch at age 22). Autonomy must be “purchased” with career capital.

Career capital is built through

• Deliberate practice: working intentionally and without distraction, mastering fundamentals and getting feedback quickly. He writes that most people and especially knowledge workers don’t do this, so it is an opportunity.
• Having the mindset of a craftsperson: how can you deliver more and more value to the world?

Instead of focusing on finding something that you’re passionate about, focus on building career capital. This will earn you autonomy and control over your career. He gives the example of a software engineer who became indispensable to her employer, and built the leverage to negotiate a 4 day workweek.

I am not sure what the best ways to “deliberately practice” knowledge work are but some things that come to mind for data science are:

• Publishing analyses and getting feedback on them. I have found this to be a great way to get a sense of what people care about, what they connect with and where holes in my thinking are.
• Creating data science libraries: learning to interact with the underlying technology (e.g. Python & Pandas) seems like it brings a deeper understanding than passively using it. This is hard work.
• Getting feedback from colleagues on presentations, code, and after meetings. This is also hard to do both because it’s uncomfortable for the ego and because it can be hard for people to give critical feedback.

Wherever You Go There You Are, by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Read this if you want an easy-to-read introduction to mindfulness meditation or you’d like to deepen and reinforce your existing practice. It occupies a nice middle ground between scientific and spiritual.

The chapters are 1-3 pages and I’ve been reading one or two of them each morning or during lunch. It’s been a good companion to the guided meditations in the Waking Up app.

My notes on Wherever You Go There You Are

The mind listens to the body and the way that you sit during formal meditation practice can affect the quality of your mind. He recommends sitting in a way that “exemplifies dignity” and thinking of yourself as a mountain when you’re sitting.

He recommends 45 minutes of formal meditation a day to patients at his clinic. Any amount is good, but he finds that if you ask a lot of people, you are more likely to get a lot.

There can be dark or scary parts to oneself and part of meditation is having the courage to see these parts and be curious about them, sometimes over and over.

Van Gogh: The Life, by Stephen Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Read this if you want to appreciate art more, you like learning about a person’s psyche, and you’re in the mood for a long read (it’s 1,000 pages or so).

My notes on Van Gogh: The Life

The Night Manager by John le Carré

Read this if you want a tense international thriller, a grittier and more literary James Bond. Or, if you’re daydreaming of a European vacation.

My Notes on The Night Manager

I thought the way Jonathan and Roper interacted as almost father and son was really interesting. And the fact that even though Roper was doing terrible things, selling guns to terrorist organizations, I found myself almost rooting for him – le Carré does a great job of pulling you into the glamour and charisma that fuels his power. As always with le Carré, wonderful escapism, British colloquialisms, and smoke-filled rooms.

The Guest by Emma Cline

Read this if you liked My Year of Rest and Relaxation and want a cynical slice of New York wealth and privilege.

My notes on The Guest

I found some of the writing a bit cliché (pretending all rich people are boring is not particularly interesting to me). But it was a fun book while being a bit repulsive and kept me going, and I thought the protagonist was an interesting character and one who I’ve met shades of before. She’s falling and can’t catch herself, consistently self-sabotaging and too broken to consider the impact she has on other people.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Read this if you want a novel that is melancholy and reflective, set in the fading great manors of mid-century England and has a peculiar, self-deluding narrator.

My notes on The Remains of the Day

The protagonist in Remains is so detached and simple, and his descriptions of things let you see them in a new light — for example, he talks at length about how it seems like his employer expects him to be able to engage in banter as one of his duties, so he has been practicing his wit. I read Never Let Me Go a couple of years before I read this and Ishiguro’s way of observing things that often go unnoticed is really compelling.

This book made me feel the dangers of having your identity too tied up in your work, such that you fail to think for yourself in matters of morality (like Stevens does with his former employer, who was a Nazi sympathizer) or in matters of personal happiness (like he does in his relationship with his father and Miss Kenton).

Hope by Andrew Ridker

Read this if you want a family novel that weaves cynicism with optimism really nicely.

My notes on Hope

The book follows four members of a family in Brookline, with a separate section for each character. This structure leads to four distinct feelings in the book. I felt most connected to the daughter’s section, and found her affair with her high school teacher to be especially well-written: you can see how a high schooler would find him exciting and attractive, but he was really a weak person and she realizes that in the end. The son’s trip to the Middle East is also very fun and absorbing and retains a light heartedness that I really enjoyed. I flew through this book, really fast and fun to read.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Read this if you want the feeling of mid-twentieth century Harlem with a fun story about a man who self-deludes into a lot of trouble.

My notes on Harlem Shuffle

Mostly I loved the setting of the book and the feeling of the city moving around Arthur, the main character. I found the story to be fun to read but not very meaningful. It seemed like Arthur kept giving in to his ego and following the desire to take shortcuts to get a bit further ahead, and this works but brings him a lot of trouble.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Read this if: You are in the mood for a coming of age love story and find Lahore a compelling setting. The writing is really beautiful.

My notes on How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

The boy’s relationship with the pretty girl (these are how the characters are referred to throughout the novel, we do not know their names) is really beautiful and poetic. Two people growing up mostly in parallel, but with occasionally crossing paths which feel inevitable, both to the reader and to the characters. It is comforting and bittersweet. Hamid’s writing is lovely. The descriptions of the brutality of life for the boy’s family as a poor villager prior to moving to Lahore were also very striking and made me thankful for modernity, with all of its flaws.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Read this if: You like voyeuristically reading about elite secret societies with dark secrets. It’s a super fun book.

My notes on The Secret History

I just had so much fun reading this. I learned the term “Dark Academia,” of which this is a shining example, and there’s something I find so delightful about it. Stories set in elite colleges, among glitzy social strivers, and something is not as it seems…what’s not to like? The psychological elements felt a lot like The Magus below, and it reminded me of the movie Saltburn (though not quite as ridiculous).

The casualness with which the main characters treat murder is really weird, and throws you while you read it, but I think that helps put you in a new mindset. I don’t think evaluating this as a story of morality is very interesting.

The Magus by John Fowles

Read this if: You like little mind games and the feeling of being somewhere where things are not as they seem. Or, if you are going to a Greek island and need a vacation book.

My notes on The Magus

This was the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a long time. I read it while at a wedding on a Greek island and it’s set on a Greek island and it felt like the perfect vacation read.

Nicholas is a wayward Oxford graduate who goes to Greece to teach at a school and becomes swept up in the machinations of a strange millionaire who stages incredibly elaborate scenarios, seemingly both to teach Nicholas lessons and for his own amusement. I was so excited to see what the next setup would be in “the masque;” reading it felt like wandering around the rooms at Sleep No More.

The meaning that the book seemed to drive at was that committing to someone and being entirely truthful with them is how you can actually escape the maze of deception and be free. This was against Nicholas’ nature who is self-absorbed and a womanizer but he seems to glimpse the truth that he cannot keep living only for himself and expect to find any meaning.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Read this if you want an intense depiction of the descent into severe depression, but covered in ‘50s New York. Catcher in the Rye from a female perspective, with more pain and the knowledge that the author sadly was taken by her illness.

My notes on The Bell Jar

I read this on a bachelor party which was a funny juxtaposition. It was brilliantly written and was darkly funny. It was also quite relatable, I could feel Plath’s struggle as she craved prestige and external markers of success while also finding them repulsive. Her feeling that she wanted to live many different lives rang true to me and I think can be a cause of deep unhappiness; it seems like there can be joy in committing to a single path.

The Last Brother by Natacha Appanah

Read this if you want a quick but powerful and sad book in an interesting setting.

My notes on The Last Brother

I liked the setting in Mauritius a lot, the psychology of being on a remote island and connected to the events of the rest of the world in a tenuous way was powerful. It made the main character’s loneliness feel much more acute, like he as a human being is floating along isolated and keeps losing his connections to other people. Very nice translation from the original French.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Read this if you want a long and rambling but epic adventure and spiritual reflection, against the backdrop of 1980s Bombay.

My notes on Shantaram:

I read Gregory David Roberts’ biography on the back of the book and was immediately hooked. The book is too long and the writing is not incredible, but it is such an exciting setting and the story rings true because he lived a lot of it. It’s a thousand pages or so but goes pretty quickly.

I loved his fixation on Abdel Khader Khan and his depiction of this crime boss as an almost omnipotent and all-knowing spiritual being. Karla is also an extremely alluring character and his fateful attraction to her is very relatable.

It was interesting that having lived a life of violence, he condemns violence as senseless. 

All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren

Read this if you want a heartbreaking and real depiction of power and ambition and what happens to people when they don’t believe in anything.

My notes on All the King’s Men:

This was so beautifully written. There were lots of passages I took pictures of because they blew me away.

Governor Stark always had leverage on people, and always believed there was dirt to be found on anybody and that seems like it is true. It is not really clear why Burden keeps working for the governor except that he believes in the progress that he makes, and that the ends justify the means. But this cynicism eats at Burden and he is miserable.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera

Read this if you want a funny, sad reflection on the meaning of sex and love with some communist politics thrown in.

My notes on The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I didn’t know at all what to expect but I thought this was wonderfully written and quite novel. The way Kundera writes so explicitly about the contradictions his characters feel is hilarious and also hits you in the face. For example, Tomas leaves everything in Switzerland to go back to Prague when Tereza runs away from him. He is desperate to see her again, bereft that she has left him. And then when returns and his finally with her, “all he felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned.”

He cannot reconcile the part of himself that wants to love her and be loved by her and the part of himself that needs to be free to sleep with whomever he pleases, to do whatever he pleases.

Sabina is quite the character, and you can see why Tomas likes her so much.

Leaving Atocha Station, by Ben Lerner

Read this if you want a book with brilliant language, set as a coming of age story of an American poet in Madrid.

My notes on Leaving Atocha Station

Lerner is just so smart, and the way he plays with words is mesmerizing. I guess it is probably because I don’t read much poetry that I’m so impressed by it. He’s honest about the things inside him that are ugly in a rare way. Lots of books are self-deprecating but about things that are sort of glamorous or at least not repulsive. But Lerner writes about feelings and impulses that are really quite ugly and incredibly self-absorbed, and it is impactful to read because it reaches you in a place that is deeper because you keep those feelings yourself in a deeper and more hidden place.

It made me want to go to Madrid and to sit and have an espresso and smoke a spliff on the roof of an attic apartment.

Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Read this if you want a long tour through Latin American poetry, in smoky and romantic backdrops.

My notes on Savage Detectives

This was a long one but had some beautiful writing and after reading it I felt that I understood a bit more about Mexico City and a bit more about Latin American poetry and literature. Bolaño writes about people of different nationalities in a way I think is interesting that I don’t experience much in America: “the Chileans are this way, the Mexcians are this way.” And the Mexicans in the story specifically reference Mexico going to hell in the ‘80s and it strikes me that when a country is truly in decline, everyone feels it and it affects the national psyche in a very explicit way, a way that is much more explicit than when a country is doing well or just stagnating. In the US right now it feels like some people talk about our country descending into fascism or falling apart but people don’t truly believe it at a societal scale yet.