Posts Tagged 2010 Books

The Periodic Kingdom [Book Review]

I’ve actually had this book for a while — I picked it up while back east on holiday with my family. Somehow, it got shuffled away and then rediscovered when planning out this years books.

The Periodic Kingdom is a book that explores the Periodic Table of Elements (ie. chemicals) through the perspective of geography. I was initially attracted (pun not intended) to it partly because I’m a nerd for chemistry, but also because I’ve been sort of working on my own variant-approach to teaching chemistry, and I wanted to see what Atkins has to say.

P.W. Atkins is a professor of Physical Chemistry (the kind that deals with quantum mechanics, as opposed to organic or biochemistry, which deals more with life-based compounds) at the University of Oxford. Throughout the book, he clearly shows that he has both academic prowess and extensive teaching experience; it’s worth noting that simply because I’ve read many books on scientific topics where one or the other is lacking — it’s not often that you find both.

That said, I was a little disappointed with the book. Read the rest of this entry »

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Getting Things Done [Book Review]

book coverI found this book by accident while looking for personal productivity tips. I kept seeing “Getting Things Done” or “GTD” mentioned in different online software tools (such as Remember the Milk).

Anyone that has read this book already will know the significance of the three letters “GTD”.

David Allen, a productivity guru that has served as a consultant for some very affluent and influential people, wrote this compelling book to explain his system in detail.

I’ll be honest that I was expecting something drier, boring, and perhaps even obsolete — this book is none of those. Allen weaves an engaging jib with terrific anecdotes and advice that just makes sense. This system will help you organize, become more productive and, as the title says: “get things done.” That is, provided you are willing to put in the effort and hard work — nothing is free, after all.

That is the rub, of course — the system is not easy, it is not something you can implement in a half-assed manner, nor is it something that can be adopted passively — if it is to work, it must be a concerted effort and the price of its effectiveness is eternal diligence.

If you are someone that is soul-searching for some solution to help you overcome a mountain of work, or if you constantly feel mired and two steps behind, this book is definitely worth reading; even if you decide to not try the system (like I said, it will take hard work to do it!), there are some terrific philosophical musings on the nature of productivity and work.

More details after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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2010 Book List, update

Just finished Satan, Cantor & Infinity, reviewed yesterday. According to my Library page, I still have 22 books to go, out of 28 altogether for 2010. With only 8 months to go, I need to read about 2 books every 3 weeks, and there are some heavy-hitters on there (“The Fountainhead”, for example).

Still, I think I can do it.

I have two books (“Getting things Done” and “Princeton Review GRE Prep”) about halfway done, and if I can hammer out a few other short books, I should be able to get back on track.

6 books in 5 months isn’t bad — I expect I will have more time to read this summer.

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Satan, Cantor & Infinity [Book Review]

book imageI picked this book up at Carroll & Carroll in Stroudsburg, PA; a bookstore I frequented in highschool.

I’ve always been a fan of logic puzzles although I would hardly call myself a logician — I actually find them somewhat challenging; but perhaps that’s the point of puzzles, after all.

In Satan, Cantor & Infinity, Smullyan weaves a lengthy fictional narrative into a series of many varieties of logic puzzles — from basic Goodman (always lie / always tell the truth) to very elaborate symbolic logic.

The title and the last chapter of the book share the same name, and it refers to a logic puzzle posed by Georg Cantor (famed mathematician). In this puzzle, Satan allows his denizens to attempt to escape damnation by guessing which number he has pre-selected, chosen from 1 to Infinity. It, among with many others, are imaginatory ways of grasping really elaborate abstract concepts such as “are some infinities bigger than others?” Read the rest of this entry »

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Outliers – The Story of Success [Book Review]

Outliers are those people that rise to the top — the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Henry Fords, JP Morgans, Carnegies, etc. The people that make names for themselves through their accomplishments.

Until reading this, I have had the notion that opportunity was created through hard work, and success was largely the result of applying oneself, with perhaps a little bit of luck mixed in. The implication of my mistaken view, of course, is that people that are not successful are lazy — which isn’t very fair, since many of the people that do not share the success of Bill Gates are very hard workers.

Gladwell, who was the guest speaker at our Scholarship Luncheon last year (my book is a gift from the Alumni Association, thanks guys!), sums up his ideas rather succinctly in the penultimate chapter:

“It is not the brightest who succeed. … Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities — and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

Each chapter of the book explores one (mistaken) explanation for why these people achieve hyper-success. “They’re geniuses,” or “They’re innately talented,” or “They were born into it.” Each of these people did work very hard, and they were intelligent, and they did have luck — but it’s much more than that.

Gladwell tears down our preconceptions about success being completely stochastic or completely deterministic — and builds up this idea of an outlier that gets a lucky break and runs it into next Tuesday. Not since Leavitt’s Freakonomics have I been shown such a revolutionary way of looking at commonplace observations. Read the rest of this entry »

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