Review

55th Book of 2019 “There’s never a right call, just people who make hard ones.” At this point in the series, our heroes are no longer heroic, nor do they get plot armor. Indeed, hero status is not sufficient to guarantee a heroic death, many die in vain or for no reason. Reading a few other reviews, I expected this to be a seriously dark book, but I found it instead to be two clicks more realistic than previous installments. The plastic coating of this universe has been taken off, and there’s grime underneath. ...

54th book of 2019 – I enjoyed it. It felt like a sci-fi version of bureaucratic fiction (i.e. 驻京办主任) where the grinding gears of tradition and succession are as much an element of the plot as the living characters. Moreover, it captures the feeling of being a foreigner, and to quote another review: “This is for all those who have ever fallen in love with a culture that was not their own.” ...

This was a frustrating book. I came into this book hoping to learn more about how policing works from the perspective of the policed, and the underlying problems about policing and criminal justice in America. There are really interesting questions in this area: How representative are police forces? How does that affect policing overall? Should police spend time optimizing for the perception of safety rather than safety itself? How much lattitude should police be given to enforce local norms? The author sidesteps these questions and instead spends most of the book complaining. We get a simplistic explanation of how our criminal justice system is inherently biased due to race (duh), and that local govornments are responsive to the desires of affluent voters more than perceived riff-raff (duh again). ...

TBW

The premise was great, and the focus on everyday Medieval life was fascinating, but I disliked every single character from the future timeline (i.e. just about all the main characters). They kept acting in dumbfounding ways, such that by the time I was halfway through I was rooting for reality to win and one of them to die due to their mistakes. Alas it never happened, and I lost interest about 2/3 of the way through.

Misaligned incentives, hubris, and too much leverage. It’s the hero’s journey of finance, and I like reading about it every time.

48th book of 2019. Came into this book expecting to hate it. I was asked, ‘What’s your love language?’ and none fit, so I assumed the framework was broken. Only read the book to make sure I wasn’t missing anything before dismissing the idea altogether. So it was surprising to find useful advice. The most important takeaway for me was a thorough argument for using the platinum rule to relationships — don’t love others as you want to be loved, love others in the ways that they want to be loved. None of the natural love languages are natural to me, so it’s great to get a guide for the crazy ways others might want to receive affection. ...

45th book of 2019 Came into this book with a strong recommendation from a friend thinking that I would get a novel similar to Foundation or Childhood’s end. Instead it was a collection of short stories, pretty depressing, confusing, unbelievable, or all three. Considering all the higher ratings from people I respect, that must be some sort of literary value to this book that I’m missing, or some higher art form that I should enjoy, but I just haven’t been able to get into it. Bailing.

45th book of 2019. A unique take on first contact, perhaps the perfect antidote to (三体) the three body problem. In the hundreds of sci-fi books I’ve read, I can’t think of any we encounter truly benevolent and advanced aliens. It’s so obvious in hindsight as to be surprising. Themes around the progress and stagnation of human civilization, rebellion against authority, dissatisfaction with even the highest standard of living and even mass suicide all get little more than a page each as Clarke steamrolls through with the main story, but part of me wishes this was more of a GRR Martin style epic told with painstaking detail. ...

One good way to gain perspective on the current presidency is to compare it to the myriad examples from the past where democracies have failed over time. This book presents the thesis that Democracies die via combination of undermining institutions (guardrails) and abandoning unwritten norms that keep democracy as the arbitrater of power is a given system. The authors compare democracy to a game of pickup basketball, the players change, and many of the rules are not well defined, but with enough norms and good-actors everybody can have fun, rather than getting into a brawl. ...