en-US Thu, 25 Apr 2024 06:16:12 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 32307358 This an alternate cover for B01LY7FD0D

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend a major announcement--the unveiling of a discovery that "will change the face of science forever." The evening's host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire and futurist whose dazzling high-tech inventions and audacious predictions have made him a renowned global figure. Kirsch, who was one of Langdon's first students at Harvard two decades earlier, is about to reveal an astonishing breakthrough . . . one that will answer two of the fundamental questions of human existence.

As the event begins, Langdon and several hundred guests find themselves captivated by an utterly original presentation, which Langdon realizes will be far more controversial than he ever imagined. But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch's precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Reeling and facing an imminent threat, Langdon is forced into a desperate bid to escape Bilbao. With him is Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch to stage the provocative event. Together they flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch's secret.

Navigating the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion, Langdon and Vidal must evade a tormented enemy whose all-knowing power seems to emanate from Spain's Royal Palace itself . . . and who will stop at nothing to silence Edmond Kirsch. On a trail marked by modern art and enigmatic symbols, Langdon and Vidal uncover clues that ultimately bring them face-to-face with Kirsch's shocking discovery . . . and the breathtaking truth that has long eluded us. Origin is stunningly inventive--Dan Brown's most brilliant and entertaining novel to date]]> 482 Dan Brown Yihui 1
Merged review:

Completely predictable to anyone who has the faintest knowledge about classical and quantum computers. The science has loopholes aplenty, and it's not even entertaining.

Merged review:

Completely predictable to anyone who has the faintest knowledge about classical and quantum computers. The science has loopholes aplenty, and it's not even entertaining.]]> 3.87 2017
author: Dan Brown
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2018/03/01
date added: 2024/04/25
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Completely predictable to anyone who has the faintest knowledge about classical and quantum computers. The science has loopholes aplenty, and it's not even entertaining.

Merged review:

Completely predictable to anyone who has the faintest knowledge about classical and quantum computers. The science has loopholes aplenty, and it's not even entertaining.

Merged review:

Completely predictable to anyone who has the faintest knowledge about classical and quantum computers. The science has loopholes aplenty, and it's not even entertaining.
]]> 12067
People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it¡¯s only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. This time though, the armies of Good and Evil really do appear to be massing. The four Bikers of the Apocalypse are hitting the road. But both the angels and demons ¨C well, one fast-living demon and a somewhat fussy angel ¨C would quite like the Rapture not to happen.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist¡­]]> 491 Terry Pratchett Yihui 5 4.27 1990
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1990
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/11/21
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]]> 15796700 477 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Yihui 0 to-read 4.32 2013
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 13139126
Food snobbery is killing entrepreneurship and innovation, says economist, preeminent social commentator, and maverick dining guide blogger Tyler Cowen. Americans are becoming angry that our agricultural practices have led to global warming-but while food snobs are right that local food tastes better, they're wrong that it is better for the environment, and they are wrong that cheap food is bad food. The food world needs to know that you don't have to spend more to eat healthy, green, exciting meals. At last, some good news from an economist!

Tyler Cowen discusses everything from slow food to fast food, from agriculture to gourmet culture, from modernist cuisine to how to pick the best street vendor. He shows why airplane food is bad but airport food is good; why restaurants full of happy, attractive people serve mediocre meals; and why American food has improved as Americans drink more wine. And most important of all, he shows how to get good, cheap eats just about anywhere.

Just as The Great Stagnation was Cowen's response to all the fashionable thinking about the economic crisis, An Economist Gets Lunch is his response to all the fashionable thinking about food. Provocative, incisive, and as enjoyable as a juicy, grass-fed burger, it will influence what you'll choose to eat today and how we're going to feed the world tomorrow.]]> 304 Tyler Cowen Yihui 4 on-hiatus 3.39 2012
author: Tyler Cowen
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/11/21
shelves: on-hiatus
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]]> 15819028
Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free.

Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.]]> 486 Helene Wecker 0062110837 Yihui 0 4.11 2013
author: Helene Wecker
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/14
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]]> 53914938 The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything¡ªbeauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses¡ªbut she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of East-End London poverty, works the legendary code-breaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park¡¯s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter¡ªthe key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger¡ªand their true enemy...]]> 624 Kate Quinn 0062943472 Yihui 0 to-read 4.42 2021
author: Kate Quinn
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 49625550 A bold reimagining of Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs--and new insights for realizing your full potential and living your most creative, fulfilled, and connected life.

When psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman first discovered Maslow's unfinished theory of transcendence, sprinkled throughout a cache of unpublished journals, lectures, and essays, he felt a deep resonance with his own work and life. In this groundbreaking book, Kaufman picks up where Maslow left off, unraveling the mysteries of his unfinished theory, and integrating these ideas with the latest research on attachment, connection, creativity, love, purpose and other building blocks of a life well lived.

Kaufman's new hierarchy of needs provides a roadmap for finding purpose and fulfillment--not by striving for money, success, or happiness, but by becoming the best version of ourselves, or what Maslow called self-actualization. While self-actualization is often thought of as a purely individual pursuit, Maslow believed that the full realization of potential requires a merging between self and the world. We don't have to choose either self-development or self-sacrifice, but at the highest level of human potential we show a deep integration of both. Transcend reveals this level of human potential that connects us not only to our highest creative potential, but also to one another.

With never-before-published insights and new research findings, along with exercises and opportunities to gain insight into your own unique personality, this empowering book is a manual for self-analysis and nurturing a deeper connection not only with our highest potential but also with the rest of humanity.]]> 432 Scott Barry Kaufman 0143131206 Yihui 0 to-read 4.12 2020
author: Scott Barry Kaufman
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 44525305 A grand vision defined: The CEO of The Walt Disney Company shares the ideas and values he has used to reinvent one of the most beloved companies in the world, and inspire the people who bring the magic to life.

In 2005, Robert Iger became CEO of The Walt Disney Company during a difficult time. Morale had deteriorated, competition was more intense, and technology was changing faster than at any time in the company's history. "I knew there was nothing to be gained from arguing over the past," Iger writes. "The only thing that mattered was the future, and I believed I had a clear idea of the direction Disney needed to go." It came down to three clear ideas: 1) Create the highest quality content Disney could produce. 2) Embrace and adopt technology instead of fighting it. And 3) Think bigger--think global--and turn Disney into a stronger brand in international markets.

Twelve years later, Disney is the largest, most respected media company in the world counting Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox among its properties. Its value is nearly five times what it was when Iger took over, and Iger is recognized as one of the most innovative and successful CEOs of our time.

Now, he's sharing the lessons he's learned while running Disney and leading its 200,000 employees--taking big risks in the face of historic disruption; learning to inspire the people who work for you; leading with fairness and communicating principles clearly. This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as a studio supervisor at ABC. It's also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the evolving Star Wars myth.

"Over the past fourteen years, I think I've learned so much about what real leadership is," Iger writes. "But I couldn't have articulated all of this until I lived it. You can't fake it--and that's one of the key lessons in this book."

Librarian Note: This is an Advance Reader Copy issued with ISBN 9780399592096. That ISBN has been moved to the final published copy, found here]]> 272 Robert Iger Yihui 0 to-read 4.37 2019
author: Robert Iger
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/24
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]]> 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Yihui 5 3.71 2021
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/23
date added: 2021/08/23
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]]> 41795733
Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you'll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world's top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.

Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.]]> 339 David Epstein 0735214484 Yihui 5 4.12 2019
author: David Epstein
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/10
date added: 2021/08/22
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Without casting aspersions, this book felt very qualitative. While reading story after story of peoples' life experiences can feel a little repetitive and unrigorous to the quantitatively-minded amongst us, I was able to push back against this intuition. It's basically impossible to quantify such claims without multi-year, large sample size studies, but that doesn't mean that the claim is worthless or untrue or should be shoved under the rug until a stronger body of evidence is available. The central message of this book resonated with me. Having finished it in spirit since April this year, I've been applying the many lessons I learned and I have been pleased with the outcome.
]]> 48507288
Immigration and inequality, globalization and technological disruption, slowing growth and accelerating climate change--these are sources of great anxiety across the world, from New Delhi and Dakar to Paris and Washington, DC. The resources to address these challenges are there--what we lack are ideas that will help us jump the wall of disagreement and distrust that divides us. If we succeed, history will remember our era with gratitude; if we fail, the potential losses are incalculable.

In this revolutionary book, renowned MIT economists Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo take on this challenge, building on cutting-edge research in economics explained with lucidity and grace. Original, provocative, and urgent, Good Economics for Hard Times makes a persuasive case for an intelligent interventionism and a society built on compassion and respect and show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of the day. It is an extraordinary achievement, one that shines a light to help us appreciate and understand our precariously balanced world.]]> 416 Abhijit V. Banerjee Yihui 0 4.08 2019
author: Abhijit V. Banerjee
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/22
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]]> 35099051
Weaving the details of her own experiences as a caregiver through stories of her patients, their families, and their distinctive lives, Dr. Mannix discusses the universal, but deeply personal, process of dying. With meditations on life, death, and the space between them, With the End in Mind describes the possibility of meeting death gently, with forethought and preparation, and shows the unexpected beauty, dignity, and profound humanity of life coming to an end.]]> 352 Kathryn Mannix 0316504483 Yihui 0 to-read 4.55 2017
author: Kathryn Mannix
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 38390751 Do you know how to play the game you're in?

In finite games, like football or chess, the players are known, the rules are fixed, and the endpoint is clear. The winners and losers are easily identified.

In infinite games, like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind.

The more I started to understand the difference between finite and infinite games, the more I began to see infinite games all around us. I started to see that many of the struggles that organizations face exist simply because their leaders were playing with a finite mindset in an infinite game. These organizations tend to lag behind in innovation, discretionary effort, morale and ultimately performance.

The leaders who embrace an infinite mindset, in stark contrast, build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Their people trust each other and their leaders. They have the resilience to thrive in an ever-changing world, while their competitors fall by the wayside. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead the rest of us into the future.

Any worthwhile undertaking starts with Why - the purpose, cause or belief that inspires us to do what we do and inspires others to join us. Good leaders know how to build Circles of Safety that promote trust and cooperation throughout their organizations. But that's not enough to help us chart a course through the unpredictable, often chaotic landscape of today's marketplace.

I now believe that the ability to adopt an infinite mindset is a prerequisite for any leader who aspires to leave their organization in better shape than they found it.]]> 251 Simon Sinek 073521350X Yihui 0 to-read 4.15 2017
author: Simon Sinek
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 2326098 384 Sonja Lyubomirsky 159420148X Yihui 0 to-read 3.89 2007
author: Sonja Lyubomirsky
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 37946426
We are often made to feel that the physical world has little or no impact on our inner joy. Increasingly, experts urge us to find balance and calm by looking inward--through mindfulness or meditation--and muting the outside world. But what if the natural vibrancy of our surroundings is actually our most renewable and easily accessible source of joy?

In Joyful, designer Ingrid Fetell Lee explores how the seemingly mundane spaces and objects we interact with every day have surprising and powerful effects on our mood. Drawing on insights from neuroscience and psychology, she explains why one setting makes us feel anxious or competitive while another fosters acceptance and delight--and, most importantly, she reveals how we can harness the power of our surroundings to live fuller, healthier, and truly joyful lives.]]> 318 Ingrid Fetell Lee 0316399264 Yihui 0 to-read 3.85 2018
author: Ingrid Fetell Lee
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/01
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]]> 38728977 Why is addiction "perfectly logical" to an addict?
Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference?
Why are some people diehard liberals and others hardcore conservatives?
Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times--and so good at figuring them out?

The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas--and progress itself.

Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more--more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander.

From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something--anything--that's new. From this understanding--the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it--we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion - and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others.

In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity--and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.]]> 240 Daniel Z. Lieberman 1946885118 Yihui 0 to-read 4.12 2018
author: Daniel Z. Lieberman
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/01
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]]> 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world¡ªuntil the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens¡¯s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Yihui 5 4.35 2018
author: Delia Owens
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/05
date added: 2021/05/05
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]]> 16181775
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a ¡°wonderful¡± husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical¡ªmost definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent¡ªand on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie¡ªand the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.]]> 292 Graeme Simsion 1476729085 Yihui 3 4.00 2013
author: Graeme Simsion
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2021/03/23
date added: 2021/03/23
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This was a fun read but not very satisfying. Part of this probably originates in its beginnings as a screenplay (sadly without the acting to add emotional heft). The characters are likeable but the book just gives up on logic toward the end. The denouement feels hasty. Among other grouses, I find problematic the book's suggestion that a person with Aspergers' can become socially perceptive through observing others (and somewhat easily too, given the amount of narration devoted to it). This is incorrect. If this was possible, I am sure Don would have done it long ago as the emotional space freed up by the ensuing escape from bullying during his childhood would have justified the expense. Nevertheless, the first half of the book (before it devolved) was enjoyable, so I give it three stars.
]]> 52879286 From the author of Utopia For Realists, a revolutionary argument that the innate goodness and cooperation of human beings has been the greatest factor in our success

If one basic principle has served as the bedrock of bestselling author Rutger Bregman's thinking, it is that every progressive idea -- whether it was the abolition of slavery, the advent of democracy, women's suffrage, or the ratification of marriage equality -- was once considered radical and dangerous by the mainstream opinion of its time. With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested.

By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese "bystander effect."

In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy.

The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving "citizens and professionals the means (left) to make their own choices (right)." Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers.]]> 462 Rutger Bregman 0316418536 Yihui 3 4.37 2019
author: Rutger Bregman
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/02/10
date added: 2021/02/21
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]]> 13525945
Not only is the clich¨¦ flawed¡ªpreexisting passions are rare and have little to do with how most people end up loving their work¡ªbut it can also be dangerous, leading to anxiety and chronic job hopping.

After making his case against passion, Newport sets out on a quest to discover the reality of how people end up loving what they do. Spending time with organic farmers, venture capitalists, screenwriters, freelance computer programmers, and others who admitted to deriving great satisfaction from their work, Newport uncovers the strategies they used and the pitfalls they avoided in developing their compelling careers.

Matching your job to a preexisting passion does not matter, he reveals. Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.

With a title taken from the comedian Steve Martin, who once said his advice for aspiring entertainers was to "be so good they can't ignore you," Cal Newport's clearly written manifesto is mandatory reading for anyone fretting about what to do with their life, or frustrated by their current job situation and eager to find a fresh new way to take control of their livelihood. He provides an evidence-based blueprint for creating work you love.

So Good They Can't Ignore You will change the way we think about our careers, happiness, and the crafting of a remarkable life.]]> 288 Cal Newport 1455509108 Yihui 4
Overall I liked the book and I especially loved the part where he explains how the rules apply to his own work, which is very close to mine. However: I think the author's extremely strong stance on NOT following your passion needs to be moderated -- passions may be evanescent and one could make a case for disregarding them, but I think that it is often worth making sense of where one's *inclinations* -- which are far longer-lasting and can contain valuable information on what *not* to do -- lie. ]]> 4.05 2012
author: Cal Newport
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/26
date added: 2021/01/26
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Let me preface my review by saying that Cal Newport is a lot more successful than me, so the single reservation I express below should be taken with a pinch of salt. Also, I strongly feel that many of the comments below should come with the same disclaimer!

Overall I liked the book and I especially loved the part where he explains how the rules apply to his own work, which is very close to mine. However: I think the author's extremely strong stance on NOT following your passion needs to be moderated -- passions may be evanescent and one could make a case for disregarding them, but I think that it is often worth making sense of where one's *inclinations* -- which are far longer-lasting and can contain valuable information on what *not* to do -- lie.
]]> 44071899
It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the "shefault" parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family -- and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was... underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it.

The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up domestic responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With four easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a figurative card game you play with your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore from laundry to homework to dinner.

"Winning" this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space -- as in, the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.]]> 352 Eve Rodsky Yihui 0 to-read 3.56 2019
author: Eve Rodsky
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 28116739
In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being¡ªhow nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind¡¯s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually ¡°think for themselves¡±? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind¡ªand on our own.]]> 257 Peter Godfrey-Smith 0374227764 Yihui 0 to-read 3.86 2016
author: Peter Godfrey-Smith
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/01/22
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]]> 9574008
ËĹâÄêÍ⣬¡°ÈþÌåÎÄÃ÷¡±Õý¿à¿àÕõÔú¡ª¡ªÈþ¿ÅÎÞ¹æÔòÔËÐеÄÌ«ÑôÖ÷µ¼ÏµİÙÓà´Î»ÙÃðÓëÖØÉú±ÆÆÈËûÃÇÌÓÀëĸÐÇ¡£¶øÇ¡ÔÚ´Ëʱ¡£ËûÃǽÓÊÕµ½Á˵ØÇò·¢À´µÄÐÅÏ¢¡£ÔÚÔËÓ󬼼ÊõËøËÀµØÇòÈ˵Ļù´¡¿ÆѧÖ®ºó¡£ÈþÌåÈËÅÓ´óµÄÓîÖæ½¢¶Ó¿ªÊ¼ÏòµØÇò½ø·¢¡­¡­

ÈËÀàµÄÄ©ÈÕÇÄÈ»À´ÁÙ¡£±Õ±Õ> 302 Liu Cixin 7536692935 Yihui 4 currently-reading 4.37 2006
author: Liu Cixin
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/12/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Yihui 4 to-read 4.08 2006
author: Liu Cixin
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/28
date added: 2020/12/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53333598
One day, he lost his spore.

He searched all over the world for a long time before finally seeing a familiar spore on the news.

An Zhe desperately knocked on the door of a colonel in the human military.

¡°Hello, Sir. Did your research turn out well? Can I have my son back after the research?¡±

The colonel looked cold. ¡°Your son?¡±

¡°I gave birth to it QAQ.¡±

The colonel stated, ¡°I raised it.¡±

¡°Sir, really. It is mine QAQ.¡±

¡°Give birth to another one to let me see.¡±

An Zhe: crying

TL Disclaimer:

1. Not as fluffy as the summary makes it sound. Not mpreg.

2. Apocalyptic wasteland science fiction (no zombies)

3. Happy Ending]]> 826 һʮËÄÖÞ Yihui 0 to-read 4.60 2019
author: һʮËÄÖÞ
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/12/28
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]]> 64582 Chaos introduces a whole new readership to chaos theory, one of the most significant waves of scientific knowledge in our time. From Edward Lorenz¡¯s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, to Mitchell Feigenbaum¡¯s calculation of a universal constant, to Benoit Mandelbrot¡¯s concept of fractals, which created a new geometry of nature, Gleick¡¯s engaging narrative focuses on the key figures whose genius converged to chart an innovative direction for science. In Chaos, Gleick makes the story of chaos theory not only fascinating but also accessible to beginners, and opens our eyes to a surprising new view of the universe.]]> 352 James Gleick 0140092501 Yihui 0 to-read 4.04 1987
author: James Gleick
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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]]> 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Yihui 4 4.38 2005
author: Markus Zusak
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/12
date added: 2020/12/12
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]]> 12158480 Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?

Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence?

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions¡ªwith no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories.

Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including:

?? - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and?overwhelm the West?
?? - Are America¡¯s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority?
?? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More
philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson¡¯s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions?

Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at¡ªand understand¡ªthe world.]]> 529 Daron Acemo?lu 0307719219 Yihui 0 on-hiatus 4.06 2012
author: Daron Acemo?lu
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2020/10/24
date added: 2020/10/24
shelves: on-hiatus
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]]> 31170723 Why do we do the things we do?

More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs¡ªwhether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.

Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.

The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do ... for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.]]> 790 Robert M. Sapolsky 1594205078 Yihui 0 currently-reading 4.40 2017
author: Robert M. Sapolsky
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/10/24
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]]> 10538
Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century¡ª1951¡ªin the middle of the United States¡ªDes Moines, Iowa¡ªin the middle of the largest generation in American history¡ªthe baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)¡ªin his head¡ªas "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality¡ªa life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson¡¯s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.

Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.]]> 288 Bill Bryson 076791936X Yihui 4 3.92 2006
author: Bill Bryson
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/23
date added: 2020/10/24
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]]> 43330899
Life is not a problem to be solved. ACT shows how we can live full and meaningful lives by embracing our vulnerability and turning toward what hurts.

In this landmark book, the originator and pioneering researcher into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) lays out the psychological flexibility skills that make it one of the most powerful approaches research has yet to offer. These skills have been shown to help even where other approaches have failed. Science shows that they are useful in virtually every area--mental health (anxiety, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, PTSD); physical health (chronic pain, dealing with diabetes, facing cancer); social processes (relationship issues, prejudice, stigma, domestic violence); and performance (sports, business, diet, exercise).

How does psychological flexibility help? We struggle because the problem-solving mind tells us to run from what causes us fear and hurt. But we hurt where we care. If we run from a sense of vulnerability, we must also run from what we care about. By learning how to liberate ourselves, we can live with meaning and purpose, along with our pain when there is pain.

Although that is a simple idea, it resists our instincts and programming. The flexibility skills counter those ingrained tendencies. They include noticing our thoughts with curiosity, opening to our emotions, attending to what is in the present, learning the art of perspective taking, discovering our deepest values, and building habits based around what we deeply want.

Beginning with the epiphany Steven Hayes had during a panic attack, this book is a powerful narrative of scientific discovery filled with moving stories as well as advice for how we can put flexibility skills to work immediately. Hayes shows how allowing ourselves to feel fully and think freely moves us toward commitment to what truly matters to us. Finally, we can live lives that reflect the qualities we choose.]]> 448 Steven C. Hayes 073521400X Yihui 0 currently-reading 4.26 2019
author: Steven C. Hayes
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X Yihui 4 4.39 1946
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1946
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/21
date added: 2020/10/21
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]]> 11324722 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780307377906 can be found here.

Why can¡¯t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
?
His starting point is moral intuition¡ªthe nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim¡ªthat we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.]]> 419 Jonathan Haidt Yihui 5 4.18 2012
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/27
date added: 2020/09/27
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]]> 25698 The Wealth of Nations articulates the concepts indispensable to an understanding of contemporary society; and Robert Reich's Introduction both clarifies Smith's analyses and illuminates his overall relevance to the world in which we live. As Reich writes, "Smith's mind ranged over issues as fresh and topical today as they were in the late eighteenth century--jobs, wages, politics, government, trade, education, business, and ethics."



Introduction by Robert Reich - Commentary by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner - Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide]]> 1076 Adam Smith 0226763749 Yihui 0 to-read 3.87 1776
author: Adam Smith
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1776
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]]> 25700 The greatest prudence, Smith suggests, may lie in following economic self-interest in order to secure the basic necessities. This is only the first step, however, toward the much higher goal of achieving a morally virtuous life. Smith elaborates upon a theory of the imagination inspired by the philosophy of David Hume. His reasoning takes Hume's logic a step further by proposing a more sophisticated notion of sympathy, leading to a series of highly original theories involving conscience, moral judgment, and virtue.
Smith's legacy consists of his reconstruction of the Enlightenment idea of a moral, or social, science that embraces both political economy and the theory of law and government. His articulate expression of his philosophy continues to inspire and challenge modern readers.]]> 368 Adam Smith 0486452913 Yihui 0 to-read 4.06 1759
author: Adam Smith
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1759
rating: 0
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]]> 83369 "ARE YOU A GIFTED CHILD LOOKING FOR SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES?"

??When this peculiar ad appears in the newspaper, dozens of children enroll to take a series of mysterious, mind-bending tests. (And you, dear reader, can test your wits right alongside them.) But in the end just four very special children will succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and resourceful children could complete. To accomplish it they will have to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules.

??As our heroes face physical and mental trials beyond their wildest imaginations, they have no choice but to turn to each other for support. But with their newfound friendship at stake, will they be able to pass the most important test of all? ?

WELCOME TO THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY.]]> 486 Trenton Lee Stewart 0316057770 Yihui 3 4.15 2007
author: Trenton Lee Stewart
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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date added: 2020/08/11
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]]> 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers¡ªNow a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel¡¯s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count¡¯s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Yihui 5 4.28 2016
author: Amor Towles
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/10
date added: 2020/08/10
shelves:
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Bravo, bravo, bravissimo! This is one of my all-time fiction favorites. You know a book is great when it transforms a cause of significant vexation in real life - being in quarantine - into a setting (in the book) that becomes a charming oasis of daily literary respite. My favorite quote: ``A man must master his circumstance or otherwise be mastered by them."
]]> 9328
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.]]> 448 Isabel Allende 0553383809 Yihui 0 to-read 4.26 1982
author: Isabel Allende
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/10
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]]> 23995360 ?
In Superforecasting, Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction, drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive, government-funded forecasting tournament. The Good Judgment Project involves tens of thousands of ordinary people¡ªincluding a Brooklyn filmmaker, a retired pipe installer, and a former ballroom dancer¡ªwho set out to forecast global events. Some of the volunteers have turned out to be astonishingly good. They¡¯ve beaten other benchmarks, competitors, and prediction markets. They¡¯ve even beaten the collective judgment of intelligence analysts with access to classified information. They are "superforecasters."
?
In this groundbreaking and accessible book, Tetlock and Gardner show us how we can learn from this elite group. Weaving together stories of forecasting successes (the raid on Osama bin Laden¡¯s compound) and failures (the Bay of Pigs) and interviews with a range of high-level decision makers, from David Petraeus to Robert Rubin, they show that good forecasting doesn¡¯t require powerful computers or arcane methods. It involves gathering evidence from a variety of sources, thinking probabilistically, working in teams, keeping score, and being willing to admit error and change course. Superforecasting offers the first demonstrably effective way to improve our ability to predict the future¡ªwhether in business, finance, politics, international affairs, or daily life¡ªand is destined to become a modern classic.]]> 352 Philip E. Tetlock 0804136696 Yihui 0 to-read 4.06 2015
author: Philip E. Tetlock
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 27 The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before.

Whether braving the homicidal motorist of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.]]> 254 Bill Bryson 0380713802 Yihui 4 3.87 1991
author: Bill Bryson
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/06/23
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]]> 44891485 216 Thomas Derksen 3641239079 Yihui 4 3.70
author: Thomas Derksen
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.70
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/06/14
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]]> 27213329
Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.

Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.

Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.

Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference.]]> 277 Angela Duckworth 1443442313 Yihui 4 So why have I updated my rating? It's funny -- despite the apparent lack of rigor, despite my lack of agreement with the presentation -- six months later, this book and its central claim have stuck with me, as I have put the philosophy it espouses into practice for the better. Perhaps a further testament to the power of the actual phenomenon, independent of how it is written up. ]]> 4.07 2016
author: Angela Duckworth
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/06
date added: 2020/04/06
shelves:
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[Updated rating to 4 stars after 6 months] This book might be too anecdotal for those who (somewhat unreasonably, I might add) expect scientific-study standards of rigor from popular science books. Having come off from (and somewhat enjoyed) the clinical style of the book 'Deep Work' by Cal Newport, the conversational tone of this book and the lack of statistical support made Duckworth's claims seem far from unassailable. (I have heard she does great scientific work though and I look forward to reading her actual journal articles!)
So why have I updated my rating? It's funny -- despite the apparent lack of rigor, despite my lack of agreement with the presentation -- six months later, this book and its central claim have stuck with me, as I have put the philosophy it espouses into practice for the better. Perhaps a further testament to the power of the actual phenomenon, independent of how it is written up.
]]> 40121985 A pathbreaking history of the United States' overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire

We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire," exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories--the islands, atolls, and archipelagos--this country has governed and inhabited?

In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century's most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.

In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of space. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.]]> 513 Daniel Immerwahr 0374172145 Yihui 0 currently-reading 4.47 2019
author: Daniel Immerwahr
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/06
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]]> 29868604
My Own Words offers Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US Constitution. Throughout her life Justice Ginsburg has been (and continues to be) a prolific writer and public speaker. This book¡¯s sampling is selected by Justice Ginsburg and her authorized biographers Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams. Justice Ginsburg has written an introduction to the book, and Hartnett and Williams introduce each chapter, giving biographical context and quotes gleaned from hundreds of interviews they have conducted. This is a fascinating glimpse into the life of one of America¡¯s most influential women.]]> 400 Ruth Bader Ginsburg 150114524X Yihui 4 4.02 2016
author: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2020/04/06
date added: 2020/04/06
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]]> 43822605
Internet pioneer and renowned filmmaker Tiffany Shlain takes us on a provocative and entertaining journey through time and technology, introducing a strategy for living in our 24/7 world: turning off all screens for twenty-four hours each week. This practice, which she¡¯s done for nearly a decade with her husband and kids (sixteen and ten), has completely changed their lives, giving them more time, productivity, connection, and presence. She and her family call it ¡°Technology Shabbat.¡±

Drawn from the ancient ritual of Shabbat, living 24/6 can work for anyone from any background. With humor and wisdom, Shlain shares her story, offers lessons she has learned, and provides a blueprint for how to do it yourself. Along the way, she delves into the neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and history of a weekly day of rest across cultures, making the case for why we need to bring this ritual back.

A compelling personal story and a fascinating, far-reaching examination of the complex world we¡¯ve created, 24/6 is a call to rebalance ourselves and our society.]]> 256 Tiffany Shlain 1982116862 Yihui 2 3.79 2019
author: Tiffany Shlain
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2020/01/01
date added: 2020/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]> 313 John Green Yihui 5
One cannot help but root for these star-crossed lovers. Hazel's dry, yet earnest voice was very compelling to me, and I loved the mini insights that spilled out of each paragraph in abundance.]]> 4.13 2012
author: John Green
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2020/01/09
shelves:
review:
The amount of vitriol in these reviews shocks me. This book is being rejected out of hand for its 'unrealistic portrayal' of teenage cancer patients, where apparently said 'unrealism' lies in the incongruence between the presence of cancer and the presence of mind to speak off-the-cuff in coherent, well-constructed sentences studded with metaphor. There is nothing incongruous about this. Many people in the world are very introspective, and a voracious reader would certainly use words like 'hamartia' in normal speech. (I know many people who do, and did so as teenagers.) Hazel Grace is not being pretentious, she is just an introspective person who has managed to crystallize her thoughts about her condition into lucid sentences.

One cannot help but root for these star-crossed lovers. Hazel's dry, yet earnest voice was very compelling to me, and I loved the mini insights that spilled out of each paragraph in abundance.
]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Yihui 3 3.89 2003
author: Mark Haddon
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2020/01/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 34
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkeness bind them

In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit.

In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.
--back cover]]> 398 J.R.R. Tolkien 0618346252 Yihui 4 4.36 1954
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at: 2017/06/01
date added: 2020/01/09
shelves:
review:
I was excited to embark on this renowned epic (ten years too late, some might say!). It is not quite a thriller, but still achieves a non-zero displacement in terms of plot development. I am no expert on this book, so I will only observe facetiously that the author's preference for adjective-first sentences ('Long was the day, and tired were the hobbits') can be rather trying.
]]> 1868867 352 Nicholas Everitt 0415301076 Yihui 0 currently-reading, on-hiatus 4.31 2003
author: Nicholas Everitt
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/09
shelves: currently-reading, on-hiatus
review:

]]> 26530386 The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.

For two and a half billion years, from the very origins of life, single-celled organisms such as bacteria evolved without changing their basic form. Then, on just one occasion in four billion years, they made the jump to complexity. All complex life, from mushrooms to man, shares puzzling features, such as sex, which are unknown in bacteria. How and why did this radical transformation happen?

The answer, Lane argues, lies in energy: all life on Earth lives off a voltage with the strength of a lightning bolt. Building on the pillars of evolutionary theory, Lane¡¯s hypothesis draws on cutting-edge research into the link between energy and cell biology, in order to deliver a compelling account of evolution from the very origins of life to the emergence of multicellular organisms, while offering deep insights into our own lives and deaths.

Both rigorous and enchanting, The Vital Question provides a solution to life¡¯s vital question: why are we as we are, and indeed, why are we here at all?]]> 368 Nick Lane 0393352978 Yihui 4 on-hiatus 4.19 2015
author: Nick Lane
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/01/09
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> 399136
Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa.

This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the develpment of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which, all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.]]> 224 Benedict Anderson 0860915468 Yihui 4 on-hiatus 4.13 1983
author: Benedict Anderson
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/07/06
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> 25744928 One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.

In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.]]> 296 Cal Newport 1455586692 Yihui 5 4.16 2016
author: Cal Newport
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2019/06/15
date added: 2019/07/06
shelves:
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]]> 28815
You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader¡ªand how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.]]> 320 Robert B. Cialdini 006124189X Yihui 4 4.21 1984
author: Robert B. Cialdini
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/01
date added: 2019/07/06
shelves:
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]]> 297673
Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.]]> 335 Junot D¨ªaz 1594489580 Yihui 4 3.89 2007
author: Junot D¨ªaz
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/17
date added: 2019/06/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 242472
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don¡¯t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the ¡°impossible.¡±

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. In this revelatory book, Taleb will change the way you look at the world, and this second edition features a new philosophical and empirical essay, ¡°On Robustness and Fragility,¡± which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.

Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan is a landmark book¡ªitself a black swan.]]> 480 Nassim Nicholas Taleb 1400063515 Yihui 1 3.96 2007
author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2007
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/05/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 242299 The medical profession recently redefined high blood pressure as greater than 130/80; this means that more than 30 million additional Americans are now considered to have high blood pressure that should be lowered, preferably without use of drugs.

Herbert Benson, M.D., first wrote about a simple, effective mind/body approach to lowering blood pressure in?The Relaxation Response. When Dr. Benson introduced this approach to relieving stress over forty years ago, his book became an instant national bestseller. Since that time, millions of people have learned the secret¡ªwithout high-priced lectures or prescription medicines.?The Relaxation Response?has become the classic reference recommended by most health care professionals and authorities to treat the harmful effects of stress and high blood pressure.

Discovered by Dr. Benson and his colleagues in the laboratories of Harvard Medical School and its teaching hospitals, this revitalizing, therapeutic tack is now routinely recommended to treat patients suffering from stress, including heart conditions, high blood pressure, chronic pain, insomnia, and many other physical and psychological ailments. It requires only minutes to learn, and just ten minutes of practice a day.]]> 240 Herbert Benson 0380815958 Yihui 4 3.81 1975
author: Herbert Benson
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2019/04/30
date added: 2019/05/10
shelves:
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]]> 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Yihui 2
Unfortunately, this is a bit of a mismatch for my reading tastes - I am the sort of person whose appreciation of a book hinges upon its plot. There is not much of one here. Also, I somehow never managed to warm up to Marie-Laure.]]> 4.31 2014
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2018/05/20
date added: 2019/03/04
shelves:
review:
The title of this book was prophetic. I did not see the light in All the Light We Cannot See.

Unfortunately, this is a bit of a mismatch for my reading tastes - I am the sort of person whose appreciation of a book hinges upon its plot. There is not much of one here. Also, I somehow never managed to warm up to Marie-Laure.
]]> 26530331
"Quite simply the best guide to the global economy today." ¨DFareed Zakaria Shaped by his twenty-five years traveling the world, and enlivened by encounters with villagers from Rio to Beijing, tycoons, and presidents, Ruchir Sharma¡¯s The Rise and Fall of Nations rethinks the "dismal science" of economics as a practical art. Narrowing the thousands of factors that can shape a country¡¯s fortunes to ten clear rules, Sharma explains how to spot political, economic, and social changes in real time. He shows how to read political headlines, black markets, the price of onions, and billionaire rankings as signals of booms, busts, and protests. Set in a post-crisis age that has turned the world upside down, replacing fast growth with slow growth and political calm with revolt, Sharma¡¯s pioneering book is an entertaining field guide to understanding change in this era or any era. A? Library Journal? Best Book of 2016]]> 480 Ruchir Sharma 0393248895 Yihui 0 currently-reading 4.13 2016
author: Ruchir Sharma
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/02/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 35696171
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.

Far from being a na?ve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature¨Ctribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking¨Cwhich demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.

With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.]]> 576 Steven Pinker 0525427570 Yihui 5 currently-reading 4.18 2018
author: Steven Pinker
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/02/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 144409
The story of that transformation is told here by Singapore's charismatic, controversial founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. Rising from a legacy of divisive colonialism, the devastation of the Second World War, and general poverty and disorder following the withdrawal of foreign forces, Singapore now is hailed as a city of the future. This miraculous history is dramatically recounted by the man who not only lived through it all but who fearlessly forged ahead and brought about most of these changes.

Delving deep into his own meticulous notes, as well as previously unpublished government papers and official records, Lee details the extraordinary efforts it took for an island city¨Cstate in Southeast Asia to survive at that time.

Lee explains how he and his cabinet colleagues finished off the communist threat to the fledgling state's security and began the arduous process of nation building: forging basic infrastructural roads through a land that still consisted primarily of swamps, creating an army from a hitherto racially and ideologically divided population, stamping out the last vestiges of colonial¨Cera corruption, providing mass public housing, and establishing a national airline and airport.

In this illuminating account, Lee writes frankly about his trenchant approach to political opponents and his often unorthodox views on human rights, democracy, and inherited intelligence, aiming always "to be correct, not politically correct." Nothing in Singapore escaped his watchful eye: whether choosing shrubs for the greening of the country, restoring the romance of the historic Raffles Hotel, or openly, unabashedly persuading young men to marry women as well educated as themselves. Today's safe, tidy Singapore bears Lee's unmistakable stamp, for which he is unapologetic: "If this is a nanny state, I am proud to have fostered one."

Though Lee's domestic canvas in Singapore was small, his vigor and talent assured him a larger place in world affairs. With inimitable style, he brings history to life with cogent analyses of some of the greatest strategic issues of recent times and reveals how, over the years, he navigated the shifting tides of relations among America, China, and Taiwan, acting as confidant, sounding board, and messenger for them. He also includes candid, sometimes acerbic pen portraits of his political peers, including the indomitable Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the poetry¨Cspouting Jiang Zemin, and ideologues George Bush and Deng Xiaoping.

Lee also lifts the veil on his family life and writes tenderly of his wife and stalwart partner, Kwa Geok Choo, and of their pride in their three children ¨C¨C particularly the eldest son, Hsien Loong, who is now Singapore's deputy prime minister.

For more than three decades, Lee Kuan Yew has been praised and vilified in equal measure, and he has established himself as a force impossible to ignore in Asian and international politics. From Third World to First offers readers a compelling glimpse into this visionary's heart, soul, and mind.]]> 752 Lee Kuan Yew 0060197765 Yihui 5 4.47 2000
author: Lee Kuan Yew
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2018/08/01
date added: 2019/02/26
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]]> 37955732 288 You Yenn Teo 9811158045 Yihui 4 4.46 2018
author: You Yenn Teo
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/02/06
date added: 2019/02/06
shelves:
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]]> 13221379
In What Money Can¡¯t Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes on one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Is there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don¡¯t belong? What are the moral limits of markets?

In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life¡ªmedicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Is this where we want to be?In his New York Times bestseller Justice, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can¡¯t Buy, he provokes an essential discussion that we, in our market-driven age, need to have: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society¡ªand how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets don¡¯t honor and that money can¡¯t buy?]]> 256 Michael J. Sandel 0374203032 Yihui 0 currently-reading 3.91 2012
author: Michael J. Sandel
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/01/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 34466963 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781501144318.

Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night's sleep every night.]]> 368 Matthew Walker Yihui 5 4.37 2017
author: Matthew Walker
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/09
date added: 2019/01/09
shelves:
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A lifesaver for my sleep. This information is so vitally important and so underappreciated that I've bought copies to be circulated amongst my underslept friends.
]]> 40605329
]]> 497 Trenton Lee Stewart 0316032115 Yihui 0 4.29 2007
author: Trenton Lee Stewart
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2018/01/01
date added: 2018/08/28
shelves:
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]]> 34890015 Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends¡ªwhat percentage of the world¡¯s population live in poverty; why the world¡¯s population is increasing; how many girls finish school¡ªwe systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective¡ªfrom our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

Our problem is that we don¡¯t know what we don¡¯t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn¡¯t mean there aren¡¯t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. ]]> 342 Hans Rosling 1473637465 Yihui 5
Rosling wrote this book when he was suffering from end-stage pancreatic cancer. He writes 'This book is my very last battle in my lifelong mission to fight devastating global ignorance.' That a person facing the inevitable could gather comfort from educating others about a data-based worldview, lends poignancy and power to the message. ]]> 4.34 2018
author: Hans Rosling
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2018/08/28
date added: 2018/08/28
shelves:
review:
I love data and I love good visualizations of data. This book has both. There is something oddly comforting about reading this book's laundry list of fallacies of the human mind, which is told in a voice that sparkles with Rosling's wit and understated passion. Be warned, though: some of the data analysis techniques presented in the book may feel too simplistic for those who regularly deal with data. But it is worth chewing on the book's meta-point: despite *theoretically* having the skills to self-correct for the bleakness of the picture of our world painted by sensationalist media, even the career scientists amongst us fail (abjectly) to put them into practice.

Rosling wrote this book when he was suffering from end-stage pancreatic cancer. He writes 'This book is my very last battle in my lifelong mission to fight devastating global ignorance.' That a person facing the inevitable could gather comfort from educating others about a data-based worldview, lends poignancy and power to the message.
]]> 3869
Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and ¡°arrows of time,¡± of the big bang and a bigger God¡ªwhere the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.]]> 226 Stephen Hawking 0553380168 Yihui 4 currently-reading 4.22 1988
author: Stephen Hawking
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/08/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 11125 This an alternate cover for 9780552151696

When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage...not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it would cripple U.S. intelligence.

Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

From the underground hallways of power to the skyscrapers of Tokyo to the towering cathedrals of Spain, a desperate race unfolds. It is a battle for survival--a crucial bid to destroy a creation of inconceivable genius...an impregnable code-writing formula that threatens to obliterate the post-cold war balance of power. Forever.]]> 510 Dan Brown Yihui 3 3.70 1998
author: Dan Brown
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/08/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 114955
The world that Colfer creates is as vivid and fantastical as any shire, gotham, or galaxy far, far away in recent memory. Grade: A-.]]> 398 Eoin Colfer Yihui 4 3.96 2002
author: Eoin Colfer
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/08/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 7170627 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane ¡°biography¡± of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist¡¯s precision, a historian¡¯s perspective, and a biographer¡¯s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years.

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out ¡°war against cancer.¡±

The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee¡¯s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive¡ªand to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.]]> 571 Siddhartha Mukherjee Yihui 0 to-read 4.32 2010
author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18114322
First published in 1939, Steinbeck¡¯s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads¡ªdriven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man¡¯s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman¡¯s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck¡¯s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 496 John Steinbeck 067001690X Yihui 4 4.06 1939
author: John Steinbeck
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/08/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 30462943 776 Mark M. Wilde 1107176166 Yihui 5 currently-reading 4.00 2013
author: Mark M. Wilde
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/08/13
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 25614523 Originals the author addresses the challenge of improving the world from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
?
Using surprising studies and stories spanning business, politics, sports, and entertainment, Grant explores how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt; how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children; and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent. Learn from an entrepreneur who pitches his start-ups by highlighting the reasons not to invest, a woman at Apple who challenged Steve Jobs from three levels below, an analyst who overturned the rule of secrecy at the CIA, a billionaire financial wizard who fires employees for failing to criticize him, and a TV executive who didn¡¯t even work in comedy but saved Seinfeld from the cutting-room floor. The payoff is a set of groundbreaking insights about rejecting conformity and improving the status quo.
]]> 326 Adam M. Grant 0525429565 Yihui 0 to-read 3.93 2016
author: Adam M. Grant
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/08/13
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]]> 4865
Since its release in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 30 million copies. Dale Carnegie's first book is a timeless bestseller, packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives.

As relevant as ever before, Dale Carnegie's principles endure, and will help you achieve your maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age.

Learn the six ways to make people like you, the twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, and the nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.]]> 288 Dale Carnegie Yihui 4 4.22 1936
author: Dale Carnegie
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1936
rating: 4
read at: 2018/07/01
date added: 2018/08/13
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]]> 13543093 New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows that despite the ceaseless news about war, crime, and terrorism, violence has actually been in decline over long stretches of history. Exploding myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly enlightened world.]]> 806 Steven Pinker 0143122010 Yihui 0 to-read 4.12 2010
author: Steven Pinker
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/08/13
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]]> 16160797 456 Robert Galbraith 0316206849 Yihui 0 currently-reading 3.88 2013
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/08/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 7176578 213 Yann Martel 1400069262 Yihui 3 3.16 2010
author: Yann Martel
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2018/08/13
date added: 2018/08/13
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]]> 503051 432 Edward O. Wilson 0393319407 Yihui 0 to-read 4.22 1992
author: Edward O. Wilson
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 148030 727 Stephen Boyd 0521833787 Yihui 5 4.48 2004
author: Stephen Boyd
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2004
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/05/26
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I owe this book so much of my (hitherto) scientific career. Boyd, both in person and in writing, has a magical ability to communicate.
]]> 148009 552 Trevor Hastie 0387952845 Yihui 5 4.41 2001
author: Trevor Hastie
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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]]> 880735 The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory in the Bell System Technical Journal more than fifty years ago. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic.]]> 125 Claude Shannon 0252725484 Yihui 5 4.38 1949
author: Claude Shannon
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1949
rating: 5
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]]> 33574273 It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure¡ªone that will threaten their lives and our universe.

Winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal, A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time Quintet.]]> 218 Madeleine L'Engle 1250153271 Yihui 4 3.91 1962
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1962
rating: 4
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]]> 3109 What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore¡¯s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What¡¯s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children¡¯s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America¡¯s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us¡ªindustrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves¡ªfrom the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore¡¯s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.]]> 450 Michael Pollan 1594200823 Yihui 5 4.18 2006
author: Michael Pollan
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2018/05/26
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]]> 17212231 ¡®Seek and ye shall find.¡¯

With these words echoing in his head, eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.

A threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck chase across the city of Florence. Only Langdon¡¯s knowledge of hidden passageways and ancient secrets that lie behind its historic facade can save them from the clutches of their unknown pursuers.

With only a few lines from Dante¡¯s dark and epic masterpiece, The Inferno, to guide them, they must decipher a sequence of codes buried deep within some of the most celebrated artefacts of the Renaissance ¨C sculptures, paintings, buildings ¨C to find the answers to a puzzle which may, or may not, help them save the world from a terrifying threat¡­

Set against an extraordinary landscape inspired by one of history¡¯s most ominous literary classics, Inferno is Dan Brown¡¯s most compelling and thought-provoking novel yet, a breathless race-against-time thriller that will grab you from page one and not let you go until you close the book.]]> 463 Dan Brown 0385537859 Yihui 0 3.87 2013
author: Dan Brown
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/05/26
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]]> 6411961
Washington DC: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned at the last minute to deliver an evening lecture in the Capitol Building. Within moments of his arrival, however, a disturbing object - gruesomely encoded with five symbols - is discovered at the epicentre of the Rotunda. It is, he recognises, an ancient invitation, meant to beckon its recipient towards a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon's revered mentor, Peter Solomon - philanthropist and prominent mason - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes that his only hope of saving his friend's life is to accept this mysterious summons and follow wherever it leads him.

Langdon finds himself quickly swept behind the facade of America's most historic city into the unseen chambers, temples and tunnels which exist there. All that was familiar is transformed into a shadowy, clandestine world of an artfully concealed past in which Masonic secrets and never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible and inconceivable truth.

A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories, arcane icons and enigmatic codes, The Lost Symbol is an intelligent, lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn. For, as Robert Langdon will discover, there is nothing more extraordinary or shocking than the secret which hides in plain sight...]]> 509 Dan Brown 0385504225 Yihui 0 3.75 2009
author: Dan Brown
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> 976 here

A shocking scientific discovery.
A conspiracy of staggering brilliance.
A thriller unlike any you've ever read....

When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory¡­ a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election.

With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable¡ªevidence of scientific trickery¡ªa bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy.

But before Rachel can contact the President, she and Michael are attacked by a deadly task force¡­a private team of assassins controlled by a mysterious powerbroker who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Fleeing for their lives in an environment as desolate as it is lethal, they possess only one hope, to find out who is behind this masterful ploy. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all¡­]]> 556 Dan Brown 0671027387 Yihui 0 3.76 2001
author: Dan Brown
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> 960
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.
Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.]]> 736 Dan Brown 1416524797 Yihui 0 3.95 2000
author: Dan Brown
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 24113 777 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0465026567 Yihui 0 currently-reading 4.29 1979
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/02/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 5470 328 George Orwell Yihui 4 4.15 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2018/02/03
date added: 2018/02/03
shelves:
review:
Not much plot here but a chilling narrative inquisition into life under absolute state control. Orwell's mastery of language and persistence in narrating this grotesque gedankenexperiment to its conclusion make for an enthralling read in a somewhat vicarious way. Would I reread this? No way in hell!
]]> 25313833
]]> 448 J.K. Rowling Yihui 0 currently-reading 4.69 1999
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.69
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/02/02
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 24213
When Alice sees a white rabbit take a watch out of its waistcoat pocket she decides to follow it, and a sequence of most unusual events is set in motion. This mini book contains the entire topsy-turvy stories of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, accompanied by practical notes and Martina Pelouso's memorable full-colour illustrations.]]> 239 Lewis Carroll Yihui 0 4.07 1871
author: Lewis Carroll
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1871
rating: 0
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]]> 16328
The peaceful English village of King¡¯s Abbot is stunned. The widow Ferrars dies from an overdose of Veronal. Not twenty-four hours later, Roger Ackroyd¡ªthe man she had planned to marry¡ªis murdered. It is a baffling case involving blackmail and death that taxes Hercule Poirot¡¯s ¡°little grey cells¡± before he reaches one of the most startling conclusions of his career.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ.]]> 288 Agatha Christie 1579126278 Yihui 5 4.26 1926
author: Agatha Christie
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1926
rating: 5
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]]> 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]> 264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Yihui 5 4.28 1939
author: Agatha Christie
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 5
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]]> 16304 322 Agatha Christie 0425200450 Yihui 0 4.16 1934
author: Agatha Christie
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1934
rating: 0
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]]> 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway¡ªa duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love¡ªa deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Yihui 3 4.00 2011
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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]]> 29056083
It was always difficult being Harry Potter, and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and a father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son, Albus, must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany, a new play by Jack Thorne, "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" is the complete and official playscript of the original, award-winning West End production. This updated edition includes the final dialogue and stage directions, a conversation piece between director John Tiffany and playwright Jack Thorne, the Potter family tree, and a timeline of events in the wizarding world leading up to "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child."]]> 343 J.K. Rowling 0540027340 Yihui 5 3.42 2016
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2017/01/01
date added: 2018/01/13
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I actually really liked it and the twist at the end brought back fond memories. "Classic Rowling!", I said to myself (granted, I haven't read her in almost a decade, so take what I say with a pinch of salt). Other than the portrayal of Ron as the once-heroic sidekick gone to seed, I am wholly satisfied with how everyone turned out. (Perhaps I was just happy to see Gryffindor taken down a peg.)
]]> 47525 288 Diana Wynne Jones 0060298782 Yihui 5 3.93 1980
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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]]> 47514 2 Stealer of Souls - Evil Neville Spiderman kidnaps jealous Cat Chant and homesick Tonino from dying Gabriel de Witt.
3 Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream - Dream subjects drunkenly object to typecast roles.
4 The Sage of Theare - Great Zond and gods try to outwit prophecy of Dissolution and dump troublesome babe in Chrestomanci's world.]]> 208 Diana Wynne Jones 0064410188 Yihui 0 3.85 2000
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 519933 240 Diana Wynne Jones 0688163653 Yihui 5 4.25 1988
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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]]> 6294 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl's castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there's far more to Howl¡ªand herself¡ªthan first meets the eye.]]> 329 Diana Wynne Jones 006441034X Yihui 5 4.30 1986
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Yihui
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1986
rating: 5
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]]> 47572
Witch Week features the debonair enchanter Chrestomanci, who also appears in Charmed Life, The Magicians of Caprona, and The Lives of Christopher Chant.

Someone in the class is a witch. At least so the anonymous note says. Everyone is only too eager to prove it is someone else -- because in this society, witches are burned at the stake.]]> 288 Diana Wynne Jones 0060298790 Yihui 0 3.93 1982
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Yihui
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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]]>