What a brilliant novel. I will keep this short but suffice it to say, one of the best books I have read in many years, beautifully constructed. The story is historical fiction centred on a fictional industrialist pre World War One, built around a spy/murder who-dun-it plot. What makes it brilliant is the construction where … Continue reading Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears
This will be a short review of this Fantasy Novel recommended by a podcast, I took it up for holiday reading. It was a hard slog for me, 538 pages of very dense ornate prose, with a slow moving story. Sort of “Midnight in the garden of good and evil” set just outside of New … Continue reading Little, Big by John Crowley
This book was recommended by so many podcasts and work colleagues and I finally got around to reading it. It’s an excellent read I would thoroughly recommend it as one of the most potentially life changing reads you could complete. As a society we don’t understand sleep, and don’t value it. This book will change … Continue reading Why we sleep by Matthew Walker
A fascinating read about human evolution from c 12000 bc by a scientist anthropologist with tremendous real world experience. He hypothesises about the key driving forces that have really made the world as we know it today, a world largely dominated by Eurasian societies and provides compelling evidence in support of those hypotheses. This book … Continue reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
A follow on from Mythos, also a cracking good read with Stepphen Fry’s inimitable style and humour. Can’t wait for the third book in the series… Continue reading Heroes by Stephen Fry
A wonderful introduction to Greek mythology which I have always been curious about but never found a really accessible read. For my own remembrance I am just going to summarise some of the key characters and relationships here: The First Order – primordial deities – often the idea of the god and the thing they … Continue reading Mythos by Stephen Fry
Igor’s rules The UnRule: all theories and all methods have flaws. Nothing can be proved with absolute certainty is, but anything may be disproved, and nothing that can be articulated can be perfect. You only live once. Your time on earth is the only truly irreplaceable resource. If today was my last day, what would … Continue reading The unrules by Igor Tulchinsky, founder and CEO of WorldQuant
The book has a few essential ideas which are worth while but it takes quite a lot of background to get to them. Below are my key takeaways. The context for McChrystal was trying to get specialist units in very different parts of the military, who each worked incredibly effectively in their specific area, to … Continue reading Team of teams by General Stanley McChrystal – leading teams to work effectively together
As I don’t have time to do full write-ups on everything I get through, here is just a brief few comments on the books I chose to read in 2018 and the key things I want to remember of them. Roughly in the order I would recommend them for general consumption… 1. Man’s search for … Continue reading Books of 2018
The book picks up on several themes that I think are very important for understanding where the world is trending over the coming years. Politics Disillusionment picks up on the rise of anti ellitest autocratic and populist rulers (connections to The Demise of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce). Issues of identity, nationalism clash with global … Continue reading 21 lessons for the 21st century by Yuval Noah Harari
Here's something that inspired me... 