Since I have the practice of recording the books I read on Goodreads, I get some interesting statistics everytime I record a book. It does list the short books published locally though.
Since I have been foraging on books from the Juggernaut app as well, there are quite a lot of them which are on Goodreads though.
Looking at my statistics as of today, here is a list of books I have read. I'll try to put a few notes I could recall on that book. It might be more of a mental activity to remember the book, but if any of the readers of this post find any of them interesting, you may take up further checking on Goodreads/Amazon or your local bookstore.
The Shortest Book seems to be "The Angel of the Odd" at just 12 pages. I recall this book from the many short story books I was reading from Juggernaut which were available for free.
The Angel of the Odd (Edgar Allan Poe) -> This is the story where a man questions the concept of luck in the regular logical arguments mode, and is faced with a terrible fantastic adventure as a consequence. This adventure described in a sequence of mishaps leaves him doubting his own convictions about the importance of luck. I recall the book especially for the comic narrative. As with all short comic books, the entertainment is in the flow and narrative.
The Longest Book seems to be "A Falcon Flies" at 704 pages. This was from a collection of British books I purchased from a local Bookstore in Kochi.
A Falcon Flies(Wilbur Smith) -> This is quite an interesting book since it introduced me to the colonial British involvement in the African continent. I hadn't really read any books on this topic prior to it and there were lots of new ground to cover like connecting the history and sequence of events leading to the story and characters. The book itself seems one off a long series with a similar theme of British adventurers on African soil, with some sympathizing and aligning to the plight of the natives, while others playing at various spectrums. Overall, it felt like a good travel read. Oh yeah, let me add - this is a work of fiction.
The Most Popular one seems to be "Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking". This was one of those 'thinking' books I read and that was quite recently too. I even was trying a more involved way of reading such books, inspired by "Farnam Street".
Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell) -> This isn't the first book I have read of this author and I really liked many concepts in his previous books. In fact when I tried to recall them, I had difficulties doing it. It was one of the reasons I decided to try new techniques from Farnam Street while reading "Blink". I wrote on the margins with a pencil with my thoughts and wrote crystallized thoughts on a small notepad after I finished a short reading session. Needless to say, I found it quite a nourishing way to read.
Now about the book itself; It is an interesting take on topics like judgement, split-second decisions, bias, fast learning etc. Being a complicated topic with no stiff borders and definitions, I believe the author did a good job overall. He introduces the concept using an interesting example of an art fraud which goes undetected through scores of months-long scientific analysis but is caught in a moment by some art experts. He then investigates what made it possible for them to do it. Though he starts of with some over-the-head promises like "Anyone can do complex intuitive judgements without years of practice", at the climax, the book didn't seem to do anything like that.
What it in fact provides is a better awareness of some concepts like the unknown bias that affects everyone, how stress makes even the most clairvoyant and fair person myopic, and provides some terminology and techniques to explain yourself to others when you perform an intuitive judgement. I found the term 'thin-slicing' very useful. He also has a very interesting case of why too much information inhibits decision making skills. I could really apply these to daily personal and professional tasks. Hence I enjoyed the book quite a lot.
Stopping it here. Will put out another post peppered with thoughts on a few other books.
Since I have been foraging on books from the Juggernaut app as well, there are quite a lot of them which are on Goodreads though.
Looking at my statistics as of today, here is a list of books I have read. I'll try to put a few notes I could recall on that book. It might be more of a mental activity to remember the book, but if any of the readers of this post find any of them interesting, you may take up further checking on Goodreads/Amazon or your local bookstore.
The Shortest Book seems to be "The Angel of the Odd" at just 12 pages. I recall this book from the many short story books I was reading from Juggernaut which were available for free.
The Angel of the Odd (Edgar Allan Poe) -> This is the story where a man questions the concept of luck in the regular logical arguments mode, and is faced with a terrible fantastic adventure as a consequence. This adventure described in a sequence of mishaps leaves him doubting his own convictions about the importance of luck. I recall the book especially for the comic narrative. As with all short comic books, the entertainment is in the flow and narrative.
The Longest Book seems to be "A Falcon Flies" at 704 pages. This was from a collection of British books I purchased from a local Bookstore in Kochi.
A Falcon Flies(Wilbur Smith) -> This is quite an interesting book since it introduced me to the colonial British involvement in the African continent. I hadn't really read any books on this topic prior to it and there were lots of new ground to cover like connecting the history and sequence of events leading to the story and characters. The book itself seems one off a long series with a similar theme of British adventurers on African soil, with some sympathizing and aligning to the plight of the natives, while others playing at various spectrums. Overall, it felt like a good travel read. Oh yeah, let me add - this is a work of fiction.
The Most Popular one seems to be "Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking". This was one of those 'thinking' books I read and that was quite recently too. I even was trying a more involved way of reading such books, inspired by "Farnam Street".
Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell) -> This isn't the first book I have read of this author and I really liked many concepts in his previous books. In fact when I tried to recall them, I had difficulties doing it. It was one of the reasons I decided to try new techniques from Farnam Street while reading "Blink". I wrote on the margins with a pencil with my thoughts and wrote crystallized thoughts on a small notepad after I finished a short reading session. Needless to say, I found it quite a nourishing way to read.
Now about the book itself; It is an interesting take on topics like judgement, split-second decisions, bias, fast learning etc. Being a complicated topic with no stiff borders and definitions, I believe the author did a good job overall. He introduces the concept using an interesting example of an art fraud which goes undetected through scores of months-long scientific analysis but is caught in a moment by some art experts. He then investigates what made it possible for them to do it. Though he starts of with some over-the-head promises like "Anyone can do complex intuitive judgements without years of practice", at the climax, the book didn't seem to do anything like that.
What it in fact provides is a better awareness of some concepts like the unknown bias that affects everyone, how stress makes even the most clairvoyant and fair person myopic, and provides some terminology and techniques to explain yourself to others when you perform an intuitive judgement. I found the term 'thin-slicing' very useful. He also has a very interesting case of why too much information inhibits decision making skills. I could really apply these to daily personal and professional tasks. Hence I enjoyed the book quite a lot.
Stopping it here. Will put out another post peppered with thoughts on a few other books.
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