3.5 Stars Rounding up.

2023 was a return to the new normal – full-time work resumed, but at OpenAI. Daily commutes resumed, but on a skateboard. On the home front, our decision to teach our children Chinese has been a case study in unintended consequences, with this decision affecting their interactions with each other, with us, and with the broader world. In reading, 2023 focused on four areas - books directly relevant to my profession, catching up on nonfiction around China, understanding America’s military foreign policy in the 20th century, and strategies to raise a family. I ended up reading about 120 books, and here were the best of the lot:

  1. The Best and the Brightest - A book on the failures of the Kennedy Administration in Vietnam, and how incentives within a system can guarantee suboptimal, even disastrous outcomes.
  2. 1587 - A book on the decline of the Ming Dynasty, and various characters trapped within the roles they played of a bureaucracy that consumed and dismissed individual will - sort of like working at a tech giant?
  3. Moby Dick - Surprisingly relevant in Silicon Valley as a parable of obsession with a profession, as well as the in-group culture that is inevitable after long isolation in pursuit of a common goal.
  4. 沧浪之水 - A book about what it means to submit individual aspirations and principles to play by the rules of our professional games, as well as the rewards and tribulations concomitant with such compromises.
  5. Raising a Secure Child - The only book worth reading (so far) on how to help children with their emotions as a parent.
  6. All Quiet on the Western Front - The best depiction of the horrors and alienation of war I’ve read.

Of the 120 books, I rated 42 as 4+ stars, and 3 at 5 stars. Nowadays, over 95% of my consumption is through audio, during commutes or falling asleep, and of course I wrote this with the help of AI. I made significant progress in reading Chinese, reading nearly 1000 pages compared to 200 last year. Below are buckets of ‘23 reading categories, along with some emoji reviews and quick summaries. A full list of the books I read is helpfully tracked by Goodreads.

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