Category: Books

Exhausted: An A–Z for the Weary – Anna Katharina Schaffner

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But what can we actually do when we are burnt out? How can we heal? I continue to be struck by the paradox that looms so large at the heart of the debates: the happiness industry pushes individual coping strategies, while research shows that in the vast majority of cases, it is our working environments that are making us sick. The burnout researchers Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter identify six main factors causing burnout in organisations: excessive workload, insufficient autonomy, inadequate rewards, breakdown of community, mismatch of values and unfairness. When we experience any of these at work, we are much more likely to burn out. A growing number of healthcare professionals argue that burnout should be reconceived as ‘moral injury’, that it is a result of unbridgeable value clashes, ethical dilemmas and continuous violations of our dignity at work.

This book is about burnout, but goes much further than that, in trying to uplift and broaden reader’s horizons with little histories and gems of wisdom. The book has a very fitting structure, where chapters are in alphabetical order and every chapters is a word, which becomes the topic of that respective chapter. It was an ingenious way to give structure to a book composed of disparate stories.

Exhausted is a great book to read: engaging; well structured; well divided – making easy to read, in 5-10 minutes, a chapter per day; great writing style; interesting stories (e.g., Bartlebly). A superbly written and organized book, with a great title, tag line and cover.

As a drawback, the book is clearly not enough professionally edited, with some extra spaces in some parts.

However, it is a book that makes you think. Anna Katharina Schaffner does not propose any theory or way to get out of a burnout. It does not finish with an action plan. It allows the reader to make it’s own mind about how to move forward. The book just puts in front of the reader the mental pieces so that the reader builds its own road, in its way.

Exhausted does not try to add any significant or overwhelming statistics, it just shows different stories and histories, allowing the reader to chose what it wants.

A great book to read.

Show Your Work – Austin Kleon

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I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: “SO WHAT?” She threw the piece of chalk down and said, “Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing.” It’s a lesson I never forgot.

The Vampire Test. It’s a simple way to know who you should let in and out of your life. If, after hanging out with someone you feel worn out and depleted, that person is a vampire. If, after hanging out with someone you still feel full of energy, that person is not a vampire. Of course, The Vampire Test works on many things in our lives, not just people—you can apply it to jobs, hobbies, places, etc.

Show Your Work is one of those short books that makes you think and change what you do. It short enough to not be a drag, but with enough substance to change minds. The book argues that the creative process is collaborative, perseverent and open. It comes with many gems of wisdom, common sense and a great pace of writing.

The books suggests to make our stories visible, ask for feedback and be clear on the main points: how, who, so what? It is very positive on expressing stories: as long as we passionately write about our interests, we find our nice. The more we write and express ourselves, the better we are. The more we add structure and motivation (so what? test) the better our stories become.

The book is not only for artists, but for everyone who is interested in communicating. What is amazing is that the book presents in such an easy way, that the reader feels compelled to at least try to be better.

What a wonderful book! Totally recommend.

The 4-Hour Workweek – Timothy Ferriss

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Slow Dance:
Have you ever watched kids, On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain, Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance too fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day, On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed, With the next hundred chores, Running through your head? You’d better slow down, Don’t dance too fast. Time is short, The music won’t last. Ever told your child we’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die, Cause you never had time, To call and say Hi? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere, You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music, Before the song is over.

The book argues that working only a few hours a week and living decently is possible.

However, the book acknowledges that this perspective requires rewriting of the usual career system. Remove working and no pension plans are needed, for example.

Regarding pension, the author makes the point that working hard and unhappy an entire professional life for only a few happy years in retirement, when people are already sick and old, makes no sense. He suggests living happily, working remotely in a job that allows much individual freedom, so the available time is spend doing happy things (like traveling or hobbies.

The book is also full of biographic notes from the author: how he started his business (supplements), how he made his exit, how he became a Chinese martial art champion (exploiting the weight measurements before fights), etc.

What transpires from his message is the idea to think differently, to get out of the usual working time and focus on the things that matter. Out with the protocol or useless meetings, out with coordination calls and replying politely to emails.

The book comes with a strong argument that time spent at work is not equal to productivity (doing more) or efficiency (doing better). In fact, it slowly burns us and makes us sicker, aloof and unhappy.

It also nicely argues that a lifetime of pain for a few years of happiness in retirement, when we cannot even enjoy the benefits due to our age, is madness.

However, what the author ignores is the safety net that a savings plan offers. All what the author proposes works with everything goes atomized and well (so no sickness, no job loss, no links with family or friends).

Additionally, many people find pleasure in what they work. Some people would do their job even if not paid, as volunteers, because they just enjoy what they are doing.

Overall, a good food for thought book, but not amazing.

Intre Orient si Occident – Neagu Djuvara

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În istorie nu există miracole, ci, din când în când, întâmplări minunate; există, câteodată, în viața popoarelor clipe privilegiate când, într-o singură generație, destinul adună mai multe schimbări decât în câteva veacuri de toropeală.

Cartea urmărește societatea românească între 1800 și 1848, in Țara Românească și Moldova, pe câteva niveluri: oraș, tigani, țărănime, momente importante, boierime etc.

Ceea ce este impresionant este felul lui Djuvara de a scrie, este ca și cum ai vorbi cu un prieten, un stil foarte oral, fără fraze lungi sau dense. Asta face cartea, foarte bine documentat si voluminoasa, o plăcere de a citi, o lectură relaxantă pe un subiect greu.

Djuvara alege subiecte interesante pentru capitolele sale, dincolo de faptele mari politice sau istorice, cu istorisiri din viața oamenilor, în special a boierimii.

Un lucru deosebit este titlul cărții, ce răzbește din fiecare capitol, o evoluție a societății române în doar 2 generații. Deși nivelurile societății sunt analizate separat, impresia de evoluție, lentă, dar fără întoarcere, este clară.

Poate al doilea mare atu al cărții, după stilul de scris, sunt poveștile adunate, foarte picante si interesante, chiar și după secole.

Deși groasă și cu istoriile în niște decenii foarte grele pentru țările române (teren de război între marile puteri), cartea este relaxantă, memorabilă, plăcută și informativă. O recomand din toată inima și, în general, cărțile lui Neagu Djuvara.

Stars and Bones – Gareth L. Powell

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We saw a dying star being pulled into a black hole. Watched icy comets graze the atmospheres of super-Jovian gas giants. Discovered a matching pair of Earth-like planets locked in an orbital dance around a hot, young star, their oceans seething with the potential for life.

The book is a detective and survival sci-fi story of a scout pilot thrown into saving humanity from an alien nano entity. The premise and the plot of the book are amazing: humanity is saved by a superior intelligence right at the point of its own destruction, it’s sent in its entirety into alien arks outside Earth, and it’s taking care of. But a mysterious entity, like a virus, able to mimic humans, is posing a great threat to the human arks. Standing tall is a scout pilot, who is the first responder to an accident to a remote planet that starts the infection.

The premise of the book is great, and the topics are some of the darlings of the afficionados of the genre. But the writing and plot are terrible. A classic case of a great idea and bad implementation. The book is a solid 3/5, where the theme is 5 stars, while the writing and characters are a low 1 star.

I was reading this book right after “The Road” by Cormac McCormack, which is a marvel of writing. Not much happens in that book, but the writing is impeccable, top of the drawer. This book, Stars and Bones, is the opposite. Great themes, good plot twists, but the characters and the protagonist are cringe and shallow. There is no psychological depth, little on motivations, little exploration of the world. The premise of the book promised so much more.

Overall, a good book, but not exceptional.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

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You have to carry the fire.”
I don’t know how to.”
Yes, you do.”
Is the fire real? The fire?”
Yes it is.”
Where is it? I don’t know where it is.”
Yes you do. It’s inside you. It always was there. I can see it.

The book follows the journey of a dad and his son, traveling south in the United States, in a contemporary post-apocalyptic world. They struggle to find food, shelter, clothes, avoid other humans turned to cannibalism. All the while, the father tried to teach his son survival skills, but also to be human, resilient, cautious and positive.

Not much happens during their journey, but the few interactions are meaningful and memorable.

The book won the Pulitzer Prize and it can be seen in the exceptional writing. The short book is a pleasure to read due to the writing skills, the descriptions, the atmosphere, the dialogue, the feelings and motivations of the characters. As reader, one is transported in that post apocalyptic world, without the need of long descriptions or explanations.

In fact, we never know the names of the family, what triggered the apocalypse, where exactly they are traveling and, in general, what happened to the world. We have only glimpses of their past and hints of what the apocalypse was.

It matters not, as the story is about passing the humanity from one generation to another, in the microcosm of this father and his son. Luck is on their side, but all has a countdown.

The late author, Cormac McCarthy, was a prized Hollywood inspiration, this book and one other (No Country For Old Man) being transposed into movies.

Are we carrying the fire?

A beautiful and touching book.

The World for Sale – Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

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The commodity traders are arbitragers par excellence, trying to exploit a series of differences in prices. Because they’re doing deals to buy and to sell all the time, they are often indifferent to whether commodity prices overall go up or down. What matters to them is the price disparity – between different locations, different qualities or forms of a product, and different delivery dates. By exploiting these price differences, they help to make markets more efficient, directing resources to their highest value uses in response to price signals. They are, in the words of one academic, the visible manifestation of Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

There are companies richer that big countries, that you never heard about. The book presents the history of commodity trading firms, from their start in early 60s to present day. Commodities are energy, metals and agricultural products that we commonly use. As trading grew and become global, these firms picked up, increased the trend and developed the global flows of products that fuel our lives and industries and feed ourselves.

Starting from trading oil, the global commodity traders, overwhelmingly European and based in Switzerland, become global power houses, not only in trading, but also in producing goods, owning warehouses and financing industries and countries.

On the good side, global commodity trading dramatically decreased prices for costumers, using every opportunity to create a better deal, a better price. In this endeavors, traders because rich, with profits in the billions.

On the bad side, those firms bought from and financed dictators, morals or international sanctions having little to do with a good deal.

What makes the book interesting is that it’s exceptionally well researched, dynamic and manages to present all major global commodity traders in an un liniar way. There is a plethora of stories and characters.

Also memorable is how some of the richest companies in the world grew quietly, outside press or magazines. Only an IPO in the early 2010s started to shed some light on their fabulous incomes, all of them being private before that and even now.

This is an exceptional, real world, contemporary, well researched, well written, engaging and memorable book. What a read!

Babylon’s Ashes (The Expanse, book 6)

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The messages coming back flooded the comm buffers with rage and sorrow, threats of vengeance and offers of aid. Those last were the hardest. New colonies still trying to force their way into local ecosystems so exotic that their bodies could hardly recognize them as life at all, isolated, exhausted, sometimes at the edge of their resources. And what they wanted was to send back help. He listened to their voices, saw the distress in their eyes. He couldn’t help, but love them a little bit.

Under the best conditions, disasters and plagues did that. It wasn’t universally true. There would always be hoarders and price gouging, people who closed their doors to refugees and left them freezing and starving. But the impulse to help was there too. To carry a burden together, even if it meant having less for yourself. Humanity had come as far as it had in a haze of war, sickness, violence, and genocide. History was drenched in blood. But it also had cooperation and kindness, generosity, intermarriage. The one didn’t come without the other.

Book 6 of the Expanse series continues the saga, with the Free Navy raise and Earth’s slow recovery following the meteorites’ strikes. While James Holden is again central to the story, he is but one of the dozen characters followed by the story. Some others include his crew; Avasarala, now Earth’s leader after the disaster; Fred Johnson, one of the main driving forces of the Outer Planets Alliance; and several leaders of the new Free Navy.

The story in the book is about the civil war between the this new force of Belters, which acquired advanced Mars military ships; the Mars’ demise and collapse of military, facing the opportunity of the new worlds discovered; allied with an Earth in tatters. Many are already seeing the dangerously degrading fragile balance of the continous war and disasters in our solar system.

The new worlds, dangerous and unknown, are the only way out to save the solar system from economic collapse. That is the end motivation for James Holden, and a new social equilibrium is pursued at the end of the book.

The aliens are not central to the story anymore and Detective Miller is a far memory, mentioned only once.

Overall, the book and the new developments follow nicely the story arc and prepare the ground for the next stage in the saga. A beautifully constructed story and series, now at the 6th iteration. Loved it.

Nemesis Games (The Expanse, book 5)

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No, it wasn’t. It was the scariest fucking answer to Fermi’s paradox I can think of. Do you know why there aren’t any Indians in your Old West analogy? Because they’re already dead. The whatever-they-were that built all that got a head start and used their protomolecule gate builder to kill all the rest. And that’s not even the scary part. The really frightening part is that something else came along, shot the first guys in the back of the head, and left their corpses scattered across the galaxy. The thing we should be asking is, who fired the magic bullet?

“Nemesis Games” is the fifth book in the Expanse series, with a title that accurately reflects the story in the book, happening centuries in the future, when humanity has conquered this solar system. In summary, the crew of the famous now Rocinante is taking a separate leave, each for its own reasons, with the exception of the captain Jim Holden. During their leave, the story of each crew member (Amos, Alex and Naomi) is followed, as each finds some of the greatest challenges of their lives, as they face, in some way, their own nemesis.

Their stories, now even sagas, at the fifth book, is in the context of the main ship, Rocinante, being in repairs; with the usual captain, Holden, away with the ship; and Earth being devastated by human-sent meteors.

The messages is that each character grows and develops to be more than the initial person that they started, before Rocinante: Amos, from a thug to an accomplished space engineer; Naomi, from a brilliant engineer to a politically astute Navy Second in Command; Alex, from a gifted military navy pilot to keen observant and detective.

Usually, the quality of a series declines with time. However, this book came strong – I loved it. The plot was strong, no magic bullets, but credible actions in given situations. Except one situation that was too good to be true (Amos finding survivalist supplies), the rest was good enough to keep the reader immersed in the story. I liked the character development, and the risky bet to add more depth to existing characters rather than bring new ones.

Looking forward for the sixth book in the series!

Cibola Burn (The Expanse, book 4)

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Apocalyptic explosions, dead reactors, terrorists, mass murder, death-slugs, and now a blindness plague. This is a terrible planet. We should not have come here.

Cibola Burn, the forth book in the Expanse series, continues the story of humanity a few centuries in the future (when the solar system is conquered), where the first planet is explored / colonized following the stars gateway that is build by the alien protomolecule. The fast developments and lack of coordination between the 3 solar powers – Earth, Mars and Belters – make the exploration and colonization of the first planet available a chaotic process, where no one knows who owns the planet (first arrivals? or treaties signed in the Sol system?). How to impose law from years and light-years away?

In this chaotic environment, Holden and his crew is tasked to calm the tensions between the first arrived settlers and the Earth company that was given the rights to the planet. However, the planet is not what it’s looking like, it’s still a remnant of the alien empire that constructed the mysterious protomolecule, able to build a star gate a billion years later. And more puzzlingly, who was this other alien race that could destroy such an advanced and galaxy-wide spread empire?

This book in the series focuses on the planetary exploration, colonisation, survival and orbital manouvers, with a pinch of detective story to inquire over the alien ruins. It’s an engaging book, but felt slow at times. The sheer world-building, hard scifi, characters developments – remain world class.

The book is not as good as the previous 3 ones, where actions scenes, mind-blowing technology and memorable characters (Avasarala, anyone?) were introduced. All of the previous books were a ramp for the next volume of the series; however, after this volume, I am not sure where the story will go. However, I did like the cold calculation that the Earth politician is making over the ramifications for the powers of the Sol system of a star gateway opening. These were the gems of great writing and storytelling that made the book a good one, but not at the level of the others.

Overall, a great scifi series, book 4 / 9 read, and who know what future holds?