Profil

An interesting book to read, even after Joe Biden was elected to be the next president of the United States. Sarah writes about a nation in despair, a country with lots of inner conflicts. She tells the history of the Trump clan and how they are connected to crimes, money laundering, Russian oligarchs and so on. Its a shame that with all this criminal record Donald Trump faced no legal consequences so far and was able to damage the democracy and international affairs during his presidency.

A remarkable advice for me is the following qoute from the book: "This is why I wrote that open letter encouraging people to write down who they were before autocratic consolidation took hold. I wanted Americans to have a way to remember what we thought of as normal and acceptable and track how far we have deviated."

A very wise advice, especially in the time of a global pandemic where you find out that lots of weird people are around that only care for themselves.

Now if you ask, why not 5 stars, then I need to explain that I got the impression that even while diagnosing more or less the critical condition of the US the author is still looking at some events like the whistleblowing of Eric Snowden with the eyes of an american patriot. Living in a country where the leaders were spied on by the NSA I see this a bit different than her.

Nevertheless, a book to recommend for reading. Hopefully the American nation has learned the lesson in 4 years of Trump's presidency.

Ein durchaus interessantes Buch für Leute die in der Lebenssituation "Paar mit Kind(ern)" stecken und bei denen sich einer der Erwachsenen von den Aufgaben des Familienmanagements überfordert fühlt. Hier bietet das Buch ein ein paar gute Ansätze zum gerechten Aufteilen der Aufgaben in der Familie. Zum Beispiel den sehr hilfreichen Tipp, dass man wenn man Aufgaben delegiert auch dazu sagen muss wie der Sollzustand bei Erledigung (Definition of Done) aussehen soll.

Für andere Lebenssituationen wie "alleinerziehend" oder "Partner ist behindert und braucht Pflege" bietet das Buch leider nicht viel an. Es liest sich wie ein Erfahrungsbericht der Autorin mit Hinweisen, was in ihrer ersten Beziehung schlecht lief und jetzt mit einem neuen Partner deutlich besser funktioniert.

Für mich als "Productivity Nerd" ist es auch interessant zu lesen, dass die Autorin immer wieder den "Mental Load" als die Überforderung definiert, sich als alleinig Verantwortliche(r) alles merken zu müssen. Hier kann ich nur auf David Allen "Getting Things Done" verweisen und den Spruch "Your brain is for having ideas, not for holding them". Viel von dem Stress der aus der Idee wächst, sich alles merken zu müssen kann man nämlich auch vermeiden, indem man die Dinge die man tun muss und will in einem externen System aufschreibt.

Insgesamt durchaus interessant abhängig von der Lebensituation des Lesers, aber nicht unbedingt so fesselnd dass man es nicht mehr aus der Hand legen will.

Da ich die epub-Version auf meinem Kobo-Reader gelesen habe hier noch als Anmerkung, dass in manchen Abschnitten die Umlaute sehr "merkwu"rdig" gesetzt sind, also genauso wie ich das geschrieben habe, die Punkte nicht über dem Buchstaben sondern im Leerzeichen daneben. Das scheint besonders of bei Zitaten zwischen ">>" und "<<" vorzukommen.

An interesting book. Manson tells a lot of stories and dives deep into philosophical questions. I would have given 5 stars if there wouldn't be a historic flaw. In the first chapter he tells the story of Witold Pilecki, a polish man that sneaked into the Auschwitz contentration camp during World War 2 and spied against the Nazis. And then you read "How did you build you own transistor radio out of spare parts and stolen batteries, Mac-Gyver style, and then successfully transmit plans for an attack on the prison camp to the Secret Polish Army in Warsaw?". The problem I see is that the "official birth date" of the transistor is December 21, 1947, so two and a half year after the war was over.
Besides that inaccuracy its a book worth reading. You learn about the basic concepts of religions and you learn, that even capitalsim and whatever drives the world is a sort of religion. Then you visit great philosophers like Nietzsche or Kant. And at the end you learn about the disruption that artificial intelligence is introducing to our daily life. That AI might be the next god.

Lots of pages, but at the end I'm still thinking "WTF?! What is the message of this book?" Honestly, I can't see it. Yes, there is that black swan which is very rare, but what is the takeaway from this conclusion?

I was reading the german translation, so even in my mother tongue I'm not able to get the message, if there is any. The only thing I understood so far is that the author does not like Gauss and his bell curve for normal distributions. The funny part of his "evidence that Gauss is wrong" seems to be the idea that according to Gauss a crash of the finance market should happen only once in whatever million years and since we had several of those crashes in the past this proves that Gauss is wrong. Problem with this is, that Gauss is looking at random events. Finance markets are not random events but driven by greed. So if you misbehave, then you get the bill for it. If I'm daily speeding on the road and get my daily speeding tiket I can't blame Gauss for that because according to Gauss it would be a very low probability to get speeding tickets for 28 days in a row.

One of the books that was painful to read for me.

Ein interessantes Buch das leicht zu "verdauen" ist. Jedes Kapitel hat genau drei Seiten. Kann man locker nebenbei lesen, ist aber deswegen nicht oberflächlich sondern durchaus informativ.

An interesting book. Hardy is telling you, that willpower alone won't do the job. The key seems to be to shape your environment so that you're less distracted, more focussed and things just fit in place. But at the end its nothing new, it is practically the same advice as "leave toxic environments" and after all, the first step is always to collect enough willpower to initiate the change. Nevertheless, this book can be recommended, if offers some special insights on the "if you really want it, you can achieve everything" mantra.

A great book about capitalism and economy. I had some lectures in economy during my time at the University and didn't understand much about what they were telling me. Reading this book now (years later of course, so I might have gotten some lifetime experiene) makes it very clear.
The book is comprehensive and easy to read, because the author is explaining the topics in a way that also a teenager can understand. You learn why Britain colonized Australia and not vice versa. And you learn the important difference between "experiencal value" and "commodity value". You learn how money is created out of nothing and how markets function. And at the end you learn why democracy and regulation of the markets is so important. Quick read with very interesting knowledge, highly recommended for everyone who is interested in how our economy works.

Pros: Some parts are quite entertaining. And it has some good advices, like "learn Java" and don't run after every new beauty like "Kotlin".

Cons: The author is probably a gifted Android developer, but his teaching skills are far from being perfect. I wish the book had more illustrations and instead of lots of pages with program code that are difficult to read with the page format used I would have appreciated a dowload address for the examples discussed in the book. So at the end the book is a not so deep overview on the basic concepts of Android programming, but at the end you just find out that you still don't know enough to start real Android development.

A quite interesting book. We all face our daily fears, but Ruth Soukup tells you that you still can do whatever you want to do, just do it scared. There is a self assesment available on her web site, so you can learn what archetye you are. Important lesson is that having fear is not a negative thing, everyone has fears. The big lesson is that you need to accept that you have no control on what happens to you in your life, but you have full control on how to respond to the things that happen to you. Once you understood this you can go on living your dreams.
The book is easy to read, some nice stories, even if I'm still thinking if all those success stories are just biased, because people that gave up still scared won't make it to the success stories part of the book. Nevertheless, Ruth herself is a perfect example of taking control over her situation, she was broken, depressed, had several attempts to commit suicide and then transformed into a caring person and is practically writing down her life experiences in this book. So she really knows the dark side, the monsters that hide under your bed and she learnt to successfully overcome her own fears.
I've heard about that book first on the "Beyond the ToDo list" podcast and decided to give it a try after hearing Ruth's story. Yes, it was worth reading and I take away some intersting new ideas on how to keep going once you're started.