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mf2

mf2@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 month, 2 weeks ago

I like to read non-faction books, mostly.

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mf2's books

To Read (View all 141)

Jason Fung: The obesity code (2016, Scribe Publications/Victory Belt)
Michael D. Coogan: The New Oxford Annotated Bible (Paperback, 2018, Oxford University Press USA)
Brian W Kernighan, Phillip J. Plauger: The Elements of Programming Style (1978, McGraw-Hill)

Read (View all 80)

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang: The Distraction Addiction (Hardcover, 2013, Little, Brown and Co.)
Richard Joos: gulli wars (German language, 2008)
Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2003)

Stopped Reading

Nicholas Carr: The Shallows (2011, W. W. Norton & Company)

2025 Reading Goal

Success! mf2 has read 6 of 1 books.

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reviewed The Distraction Addiction by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang: The Distraction Addiction (Hardcover, 2013, Little, Brown and Co.)

The question of our time: can we reclaim our lives in an age that feels …

Waste

The tagline promises "getting the information you need and the communication you want, without enraging your family, annoying your colleagues, and destroying your soul", but the book offers no information on how to do that, except for the no-brainer things like blocking addictive websites or "being mindful" on how you use the internet.

What I hoped for was information on how I can e.g. follow certain subreddits without falling into rabbitholes of doomscrolling - because they do contain useful information sometimes. Instead, I got platitudes and non-helpful rambling.

reviewed The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

Nicholas Carr: The Shallows (2011, W. W. Norton & Company)

Waste of time

The book starts with 110 pages of history rambling, which is completely unnecessary for the main point. Then, it continues with more rambling about digital services from the point of view of a stereotypical apple user, sometimes "backup up" by misinterpreting research articles.

reviewed Hamlet's BlackBerry by William Powers

William Powers, William Powers: Hamlet's BlackBerry (Hardcover, 2010, Harper)

"A soulful polemic that challenges the sacred dogma of the digital age--that the more we …

None

Complete waste. On page 75, the author is still setting up the problem, which can be summarized in the sentence "we are using our digital devices too much".

This book should have been a blog post or an article.

reviewed gulli wars by Richard Joos

Richard Joos: gulli wars (German language, 2008)

None

Geht so. Ist natürlich einzigartig, da quasi-biographisch. Schreibstil und Grammatik lassen aber bis Weilen zu wünschen übrig, manche Passagen waren mir persönlich zu lang. Dafür ist das eigentlich Interessante - nämlich, wie der Verkauf nach Österreich überhaupt zustande gekommen ist - nicht im Buch enthalten.

Kann man schon mal lesen, aber nicht wirklich etwas draus mitnehmen.

reviewed Ultralearning by Scott H. Young

No cover

Scott H. Young: Ultralearning (2019, Harpercollins, HarperCollins B and Blackstone Audio)

None

It is alright, but as others mentioned it reads like a very inflated blogpost. What annoyed me the most are the extremely repetitive examples. Young talked to about 5 people about their learning strategy and draws from these instances again and again, while ignoring any survivorship bias (as it is common for these types of books).

Nevertheless, it contains some useful takes. For me, the best advice was to research on how other people learned topic and to give this research lots of time, as it will save significant effort in the future.

Young should read Mortimer Adler's "How to read a book" - not only because Adler gives excellent advice on how to structure an expository book like this, but because he talks about what you can do if your learning is dependent on "absent teachers", i.e. you do not have access to a class or a 1:1 instructor …