Brave Enough

If I could distill everything that I have learnt about love and attraction and lust and life and persistence and bravery and marriage and children and facing your fears and growing up? If I could do that, it would be this slim book. I stumbled across Cheryl Strayed, in (as usual) a Farnam Street post. And then promptly bought all her books and forgot about reading them. Better late than never though....

July 31, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

How to Pronounce Knife

This was the best collection of short stories, I’ve read since O’Henry. No O’Henriesque twists, but fate and life and love deal the characters and us readers, enough drama that none are needed. A couple of lines, that struck me … Raymond didn’t like to talk back to his sister, but this time he thought she was wrong to say what she did. “Well,” he said, “you know, maybe Miss Emily ain’t ever gonna be with a man like me, but I want to dream it anyway....

July 30, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

A Mathematician’s Lament

This little book, had me yelling, “YEA! HELL, YEA!” at every page. The book’s evolved from this really beautiful lament, which is available online and has a newer section titled Exultation. The article has the main thrust of the book and is worth your time. (as is the book, specially if you have kids, or you teach kids, or if you want to shape someone’s thinking about Mathematics) Highlights from the book follow …...

July 24, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

The Comfort Crisis

I kept reading books and articles about solitude and discomfort and boredom. This Michael Easter book covers all of it, succinctly in the frame of a journey to the Alaskan wilderness. Worth a read. Highlights from the book follow … “When our ancestors weren’t searching for food or getting pummeled by mastodons, they had long moments of downtime, lounging around for hours a day. They had to make something out of their boredom....

July 14, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

The Overstory

When a book keeps popping up in your radar, from a wide variety of sources, over months, then you just have to go read it. via the amazing Ricardo Siri. click the image to see full size. The Overstory was it for me. Two friends, three random youtube videos and a couple of podcasts made be buckle down and read it. I wanted to go slow and savour it and finish it slowly....

May 31, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

Cashflow for Creators

If you want to someday make money from your skills and your craft, you owe it to yourself to read this. If you have never read Lucas, you owe it to yourself to read him. Buy Cashflow for Creators! My highlighted notes from the book follow … Craft is the nuts and bolts of how you do The Thing. For a writer, it’s stuff like grammar and spelling and reading. For a glass artist, it’s not mixing different COEs or—at the highest levels—how to mix different COEs....

April 13, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

A Love Letter to Books

Despite financial troubles there’s a sense in which my childhood was immensely privileged — a pauper in the material world, I was a sultan in the world of ideas. — Erik Hoel I started by wanting to share that quote and link on my microblog and then my thoughts turned into a blog post sized comment. I decided to post it here too, then. That quote describes my life to a T, even now....

April 8, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

What to Read, How to Read. Recommendations from Folks, I Admire and Follow (2021 Edition)

*Image, courtesy [Tom Gauld][tgt]* This post was first sent to my newsletter on February 1st, 2021. You really ought to subscribe :) Welcome to the first, “serious” newsletter of 2021. This was supposed to be my year end post, but life, as usual got in the way. Now that I’ve jammed both the blogs together, most of the personal stuff is going to stay focussed on stuff about books and reading and writing and a few photos thrown in once in a while for good measure....

February 1, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

Taking Notes, An Example

I have been telling the young ones, that reading the things they consider important, needs to be engaged. Engaged with the words. Engaged with the flow. With the author. Her ideas. The way she makes her case. Or tells her story. To wrestle with what is being said, or left unsaid. To build a mental model with the ideas being presented. To write it all down. To wrestle with the work and draw your own conclusions....

January 29, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza

Book Notes, Ultralearning

This post was first sent to my newsletter on December 7th, 2020. You really ought to subscribe :) The beginning is always today. — Mary Shelley The biggest obstacle to ultralearning is simply that most people don’t care enough about their own self-education to get started Finding Time for Ultra learning What matters is the intensity, initiative, and commitment to effective learning, not the particulars of your timetable There are nine universal principles that underlie ultralearning projects....

January 25, 2021 · Mario Jason Braganza