Reviews and Comments

Like it's about hot dogs but it's really about America and life

This book made me feel like a kid! Imagination and play are such wonderful things. This book reminded me of when my older cousin would take me on long adventures to find hidden treasure buried in the cliffs by our grandparent's trailer at Lake Eufala.

This book was great. Tesla talks about his inventions a bit, but he mostly tells some whacky stories from his childhood as well as anecdotes from his quite colorful life. He had some really interesting ideas about himself, life, and technology. I'm not sure I disagree with all of them either. Maybe we are all just automaton following a very complex set of rules. He's not the only super intelligent person to believe this. Stephen Wolfram (the guy behind Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica) wrote a tome on the subject.

Tesla predicted a lot of things about our current technology and the implications of worldwide near-instant communication; it almost makes me wonder if his more implausible sounding ideas actually have merit?

Maybe there is some form of the internet that can terraform, who am I to say?

Okay non technical discussions about blockchains and their social impact. Doesn't really go into economics a whole lot. Quite a surface level book.

Enjoyable read for sure. I like her writing style.

I really enjoyed this book! The technical details are outdated obviously, but it’s so awesome to see the state of things back in the 80s. It was a really cool historical read. I could read hacker antics for ages. The back half is much more technical, and may not be as interesting to other readers unless you’re really into computer science history.

Great book full of golden nuggets about art, life, creativity, collaboration, purpose, time.

Will definitely be rereading this.

The later half is better than the first, but it’s not amazing. It’s also quite repetitive. There are some good case studies though, and I learned a few things. It’s not very technical for a developer, but it’s probably technical to some.

This was an entertaining and informative telling of the stories behind the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Also, Wall Street is fucked up.

Big fan of Michael Lewis. Can't wait to read more of his books.

Weird thriller that I quite enjoyed

Nonsensically violent short story by one of the early "weird" authors. Amusing and twisted, though I don't think I was in the right mood for it this morning. There wasn't enough substance to make the violence interesting in my opinion.

This is my second time to read this since I was probably 14 or 15 when I found it on my mom's bookshelf.

Of course a lot of parallels with addiction stood out to me now. Drugs usually blunt emotional development to some extent, and there is a lot of emotional development to be done when first in recovery. That's quite like Charlie's emotional development lagging far behind his sudden increase in intelligence.

I also noticed the theme of the past always creeping back into your current reality and causing issues.

P.S. I didn't think I would cry, but I forgot the punch that the ending brings to your gut.

So the content of this book is really good. I resonate with a lot of it, and there are some really good tools in here. However, the delivery is quite annoying. It’s not the cussing, it’s the silly sayings and fluff. It didn’t ruin the book, but I learned that I much prefer a more straightforward writing style, especially for non fiction.

“And if you’ve read this book and you thought the main character was an asshole but you kind of liked him, that was all because of Tim O’Connell”

Main character is definitely an asshole, as is seemingly everyone in the army.

Very simple and straight forward writing style, though it was heavily edited as seen in the quote I posted from the acknowledgements.

Ever since I was in early high school and read William S. Burroughs’ Junky, I’ve loved brutally honest stories of hardcore addicts, and this definitely fits that description.

"The soil of a man's heart is stonier."

I really enjoyed this book. I found a lot of analogies with addiction and regret. That nagging feeling that's hard to shake. King was in the middle of his addiction when he wrote this, and there are several bits taken from his actual life.

"Smucky, he was obedient."