Book-Notes

*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. Seems like that is what I was doing most of last year, anyway. ...

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. (which might not necessarily be what the author intends). ...

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 ...

This post was first sent to my newsletter on November 16th, 2020. You really ought to subscribe :) Teaching Birds How to Fly, & Skin in the Game! via pixabay This probably is the last post, I have on Antifragile, for now. These lessons over the past few weeks are those, that have sunk in for me, and something that I use on a daily basis. I’ll write more as I learn and internalise some new piece of wisdom (knowing the book, I’m sure I will). ...

This post was first sent to my newsletter on November 7th, 2020. You really ought to subscribe :) What I Learnt from Antifragile (IV) In a world with too much choice … Lindy is the cure via Screenrant So here’s a little distinction I learnt. We, who are about to die, mortals need to become antifragile. We know, we are going to die someday, and are always being buffeted by the storms of life, so we seek to get stronger. ...

This post was first sent to my newsletter on November 2nd, 2020. You really ought to subscribe :) Nothing really exciting this month. I had lots of work and could not quite focus on reading hard books or non fiction. I needed to escape from the humdrum of life So, I read a lot of Jack Reacher. I decided to read all of the Lee Child novels featuring the character. And all of that, started because I read a book, that followed Lee Child around for a year, describing his writing process and the work that goes into a Reacher novel. It’s been fun, reading. Like meeting an old friend. Considering that he writes about one a year, I find it slightly alarming that I have now read seventeen years of Child’s work in a month. ...