Overall Score: 6.5/10

This book aims to show how small, everyday innovations can drive big results, and outlines ways that each of us can be more creative in our own lives. The book has two main sections. The first section explains what creativity is. The second section outlines eight habits or rules that innovators follow to help them achieve their goals. The author relies heavily on anecdotes to illustrate his key points, with each chapter containing numerous stories about how innovators applied the principles outlined in his book to help them succeed.

The book was a short and entertaining read. I found the first section to be much more interesting than the second. He cites various academic studies about creativity and offers some examples of simple ways we can improve our creative output. The tools that he outlines in the second section of his book were interesting, but they were a little too broad for my taste. For instance, two of his rules are essentially “be resilient” and “go the extra mile,” which is not exactly groundbreaking. The saving grace is that the anecdotes were colorful and interesting to read about. Many of the examples were also from the most recent decade, which is refreshing compared to some other business books that cite the same historical examples over and over. Despite the relatively low rating, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the world of business or is looking for ways to become more creative.

Few things I learned:

• The Torrance Test measures four components of creativity: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality. In an experiment, the “awe-inspired” group outperformed the “dullness” group by 70% on fluency, 69% on flexibility, 79$ on elaboration, and 114% on originality
• According to a Stanford study, when a person was walking compared to sitting, creative output increased by an average of 60%
• Imagination is any new idea, creativity is a new idea that has some value, whereas innovation is a creative idea that has utility

Overall Score: 6/10

This book aims to debunk the 10,000 hour rule, which suggests that 10,000 hours of practice is necessary before a skill is mastered. The goal of this book is to find shortcuts in life to help “skip the line” and achieve desirable outcomes without necessarily putting in all the work. Most chapters of the book introduce new techniques or ways of thinking that can be used to help accomplish this goal. The author uses many of those methods on a regular basis, which is what helped him achieve the success he has today. The book is very efficient and to the point, which makes the read quite enjoyable.

To be honest, I had a lot of trouble when trying to review this book. On one hand, the author had a lot of interesting concepts, some of which appeared to be very useful to me. On the other hand, this book was effectively an amalgamation of pieces of advice that the author has come across, without much real substance behind it. The methods that worked for him may not necessarily work for me or other readers. He clearly has an accomplished career as an entrepreneur, but he is more skilled at the art of selling than anything else (but maybe that is the right takeaway!). He does not source any of his claims, which makes me somewhat dubious that everything he says is true. I walked away from this book feeling somewhat more motivated, with more potential tools at my disposal, but I am not any more convinced that his tools can generate the results that I want.

 Few things I learned:

• A conspiracy number is the number of things that have to go right for a good idea to work. It is a good rule of thumb to help determine which idea to pursue
• In 1934, Disney sold a million watches at $3.75 to help save the company
• Thirty is the maximum number of people we can directly know. We can retain information and gossip about roughly 150 people.

Overall Score: 6.5/10

The book makes the argument that humans have a strong instinct to belong to small groups or tribes. Individuals who are part of tribes generally feel a greater sense of community and often experience more happiness. The reason behind this lies deep in our evolutionary past as a species and can partially explain why so many people suffer from psychological issues today. Another theme of the book is that sometimes adversity can turn out to be a blessing. The human spirit is more resilient than we think, especially when we feel like we can rely on others in our community.

This book was an extremely quick read and can be done in a single sitting. The concepts are not particularly difficult to understand, but they are rather unintuitive. For instance, I would have thought that our lives are far superior to those of American Indians, but I now have a better understanding of why their cultures are sometimes more appealing. The book also talks about how wars or natural disasters often do not end up defeating the spirit of communities. Rather, it gives them a reason to unify against a single cause, resembling tribal communities of the past, which actually results in less psychological issues. The author paints a compelling case, but I am not sure I fully buy into all of his arguments. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a better understanding of the meaning of community.

Few things I learned:

• A surprising number of Americans chose to join American Indian societies rather than staying in their own, while the opposite almost never happened
• The Iroquois Nation had peacetime leaders, called sachems, and war leaders. Sachems had complete authority over the civil affairs of the tribe until war broke out, at which point the war leaders took over
• Researchers have not yet found any relationship between suicide and combat. Combat veterans are statistically no more likely to kill themselves than veterans who were never under fire

Overall Score: 7/10

The book takes a close look at the American opiate epidemic from a journalist’s perspective. The book is separated into five parts, with the first two being the most extensive. The first part primarily discusses the factors driving the pervasiveness of the epidemic. Painkillers suddenly became a panacea for things other than terminal cancer, on the false pretense that they are non-addictive when used to treat pain. This led to the emergence of extremely profitable pill mills, which created a generation of opioid addicts for Mexican drug dealers (primarily from Nayarit) to take advantage of. The next few parts go into detail about how America started (slowly) responding to the epidemic. While the overall narrative makes it seem like we are doing too little too late, the final part offers us a glimmer of hope. It shows us that Portsmouth, Ohio, a place once at the center of the entire epidemic, has shown encouraging signs of recovery and resilience. I thought it was a beautiful way to conclude the book, which otherwise tells a very dark narrative.

The book really opened my eyes to the subject. I had always known that the opioid epidemic was a big deal in America, but I had never known of the extent. The author does a great job of telling the stories of not just those families who have been severely negatively impacted by the pandemic, but also of those young drug dealers who travel from Mexico in hopes of a better future for themselves. I thought the book was wonderfully written, which is what I would expect from a journalist. However, I did think that certain sections, especially in the middle, were highly repetitive. I think that was unavoidable, as inevitably the author would have interviewed people who had similar stories, but he could have done a better job streamlining everything. The timeline at the beginning was helpful, but the somewhat anachronistic structure of the book did make it slightly confusing at times. Overall, I would recommend the book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the subject, especially those like me, who have historically been insulated from it.

Few things I learned:

• Dr. Jick wrote a paragraph that said “of the almost twelve thousand patients treated with opiates while in a hospital before 1979, and whose records were in the Boston database, only four had grown addicted.” This single paragraph became the source behind the idea that opiates are non-addictive
• Columbus, Ohio is known as the “test-market capital of the United States” due to its demographics mirroring that of broader America
• In 1996, Dr. David Procter started a clinic in South Shore, Kentucky, which is presumed to be the nation’s first pill mill

Overall Score: 8.5/10

I got this book as a complimentary e-book through The Wall Street Journal. This topic was the most interesting and relevant to me, so I chose it out of the four available options that month. The author, Dr. Stefanie K. Johnson, is an associate professor at the Leeds School of Business and spends a lot of her time understanding organizational behavior and the benefits of diversity. In the first sections of her book, she talks about the concepts of uniqueness and belonging, and discusses important lessons that all inclusifyers should be aware of. Then, she discusses the various archetypes that people generally fall under (meritocracy manager, culture crusader, team player, white knight, shepherd and optimist), and the steps that members of each archetype can take to become more of an inclusifyer. She then concludes the book by discussing her own inclusifyer journey. I thought the middle chapters discussing the various archetypes were especially helpful (I discovered that I am an optimist), and contain a lot of great, practical information.

As a true academic, the author did a great job producing a book that was well-research and well-cited. She was careful to include full sources for every single statistic that she cited, and I was able to independently verify the few sources that I did spot check. One tiny criticism is that sometimes statistics would be presented in a vacuum without any additional context. For instance, in an earlier chapter she talks about the Salesforce CEO being an inclusifyer, leading to astronomical growth of 30 percent a year and reaching $13.1 billion in revenue in 2019. While that is impressive as a standalone statistic, it probably would have been helpful to understand that in the context of peer companies. Another example is in a later chapter, she said that “Deloitte has shown that teams who have higher rates of inclusion outperform others by eight to one.” While the Forbes article she cited did phrase that in a similar manner, the original Deloitte study seems to have a claim that is much milder. However, I do not want any of that to take away from her overall message. It clearly pays to be an inclusifyer, and everyone should strive to be one. I thought the book was incredibly useful in helping me frame some of my viewpoints at the workplace. I am sure most people reading this will fall into one of the several archetypes that she describes and has specific actions to take before becoming a full inclusifyer. I think almost everyone can benefit from the lessons in her book, and thus would highly recommend it.  

Few things I learned:

• When the National Symphony Orchestra began anonymizing the first round of auditions, women were 50% more likely to move to the finals and became 1.6 times as likely to be selected
• A growth mindset is a belief that talent can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and input from others. A fixed mindset is a belief that talents are innate gifts
• The total cost of losing a valued employee ranges from 90 percent to 200 percent of that employee’s annual salary

Overall Score: 7.5/10

The book examines why our interactions with strangers often go wrong. We have trouble identifying liars because we have the tendency to believing that others are telling the truth by default. On top of that, often have trouble interpreting other people’s actions and emotions, a problem that is amplified across cultures. He also introduces readers to the concept of coupling, where certain behaviors are only linked to specific conditions. He explains these core concepts through a series of case studies. I had heard of about half of those stories, but the other half was completely new to me.

I thought the book was wonderfully written. The author is exceptional at storytelling and does a great job of applying concepts to real-world examples and pulling everything together at the end. I also really enjoyed the footnotes, which added an additional layer of depth. My biggest criticism of the book is that it is not very prescriptive. Of course, I am now more aware of these cognitive biases, and will likely be more skeptical when dealing with strangers. However, I would have liked to see him do a better job of explaining what we can do with this information. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in better understanding how the world works, especially in the current, highly politicized environment.

Few things I learned:

• In general, we are better at identifying people who are telling the truth, but much worse at identifying people who are lying. In other words, we have a default to truth
• If an American male of average weight has eight drinks over four hours, he would end up with a blood-alcohol reading of 0.107. The average female would be at 0.173. Some of that difference is due to women having much less water in their bodies than men. A woman of the same weight would be at 0.140.
• Out of 515 people who had tried to commit suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate bridge between 1937 and 1971, only 25 of them ended up killing themselves some other way

Overall Score: 7/10

The book examines why habits exist and how they can be changed, primarily through anecdotes and real-world examples. Each chapter follows a few main characters, using their stories to illustrate key concepts related to habit formation. The habit loop essentially consists of a cue, a routine, and a reward. By identifying each component of the habit loop, you can better develop a plan to change the behavior that delivers the reward you are craving. The author’s goal is to empower the reader to believe in change, and then making the change real by developing it into a habit.

The book was an extremely easy read. The author did a good job explaining complex concepts in relatively simple terms, often invoking diagrams to illustrate his points. However, the book was not as scientifically rigorous as I would have hoped. It read more as a collection of stories, loosely tied together to fit the author’s narrative. Sometimes, it felt like the author was stretching to make the stories fit the concept of the habit loop. Other times, for example, when he mentions Tony Dungy, it feels like he is not giving enough credit to other factors outside of simply habit formation. To the author’s credit, he includes a very comprehensive notes section at the back of his book, where he seems to reference many scientific studies. However, I personally would have liked to see more of the science referenced in the body of the work itself. Overall, I still felt like it was a helpful book to read. However, I view this as more of a starter book in the subject, rather than something that is comprehensive.

Few things I learned:

• To pathological gamblers, near misses looked like wins, whereas for nonpathological gamblers, they looked like losses
• In a study on willpower, four-year-olds who could delay gratification the longest ended up with the best grades and with SAT scores 210 points higher
• In landing a job, weak-tie acquaintances were often more important than strong-tie friends because weak ties give access to social networks where people don’t otherwise belong

Overall Score: 8/10

Death’s End is the final book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. The book spans billions of years and primarily revolves around the main character, Cheng Xin. It was interesting that each book in the trilogy had a slightly different format. I thought perhaps the first book and the second book diverged because they had different translators. But this book had the same translator as the first book, proving that the author was using the format as a creative way to give each book a distinct feel. This book had chapters interspersed that had a narrator give context for what was going on. It was not until the end of the book that we realize this is told from the perspective of the protagonist, Cheng Xin.

I was incredibly happy with how this book concluded the series. I remember being mildly disappointed with the final book in the Lord of the Rings series, but that was because the bar was set so high from the first two books. The bar for this series was high after the first book, but the author really delivered. The story progressed naturally, but there were moments where I felt were truly unexpected, which kept me guessing until the very end. I know I enjoyed the series because of the sense of sadness I felt after I finished the final page. I would highly recommend this series to anyone who is interested in the genre.

Few things I Learned:

• The Mohorovicic discontinuity is the boundary between the Earth’s crust and the mantle
• Spacetime is 26-dimensional in bosonic string theory, 10-dimensional in superstring theory, and 11-dimensional in M-theory
• The Oort cloud is a theoretical cloud of icy objects surrounding the sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,00 au

Overall Score: 8/10

The Dark Forest is the second book in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. This book primarily discusses earth’s response to what seems like imminent war with Trisolaris. I found it interesting that the first two books in the series had slightly different formats. The first book had many short chapters, whereas the second book had long sections with no clear chapter delineations. I thought it was an interesting stylistic choice, and perhaps was deliberately chosen to fit the dark, chaotic theme of the second book.

I enjoyed this book better than the first book. The plot was a little bit harder to follow at times, but it really came together by the end. Some of the settings were more abstract, given that more of the book takes place further in the future, but author did a great job in spelling it out for the reader. The book was full of twists and turns; I certainly did not expect many of the key plot points, which kept me glued to the book. I also liked how the author concluded this book. Although there is still one more book left in the trilogy, the ending of the second book felt like a natural conclusion. There is a path to (temporary) peace between Earth and Trisolaris, which seemed almost impossible at the beginning of the book. I can’t wait to start the next book and see what else is in store for humanity.

Few things I Learned:

• A tokamak is a device that uses a magnetic field to contain plasma in the shape of a torus
• The first cosmic velocity is the orbital velocity, the velocity needed to keep the orbit around a celestial body. The second cosmic velocity is the escape velocity, the velocity needed to escape the gravitational field of a celestial body. The third cosmic velocity is the velocity needed to escape from the gravitational field of the solar system
• Lagrange points are five points where the gravitational forces of two large bodies and the centripetal force balance each other out

Overall Score: 7.5/10

This book was recommended to me by multiple friends, so I made it a priority to get my hands on it as soon as I could. The original book was written in Chinese, but it has been translated into English by another science fiction author. I thought the book was a fascinating read. The structure of the book was fairly unique, jumping from time period to time period, and switching between various locations. The constant change in pace, combined with the interesting plot, kept me engaged from beginning to end.

I thought the book was an interesting take on science fiction. It talks about technologies and concepts that are almost plausible, until you realize the premise is about us being in contact with an alien race. It raises the interesting question of how humans would actually react in the face of a crisis. It also is a great testament to the gravity of the quote by Arthur C. Clarke: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the trilogy!

Few things I Learned:

• The Three-body Problem is a physics problem where no general closed-form solution exists
• Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to earth at ~4.37 light-years away. It is a triple star system consisting of Alpha Centauri A (Rigil Kentaurus), Alpha Centauri B (Toliman) and Alpha Centauri C (Proxima Centauri)
• The United Nations declared 2005 to be the International Year of Physics. The declaration coincided with the 100^th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s miraculous year when he wrote three of his most famous scientific papers