Stay a little hungry .....: Books this half year

I am pleased that joining goodreads groups has helped me increase the number of books I read. Not that I read all the month book suggestions - my reading speed is not that high. One math / science book a month is the rate right now.

Still I did sneak in other topic books as my 'read' book shelf shows. These are some of the books that have stayed on my mind. They are in no specific order.

1. Impro : Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone

This is an unusual book for me but I am very happy to have read it. Theater and the art of dramatization is far from my sphere and I wondered if I would even perceive anything in this book. However interactions with people is part of everybody's sphere, it is after all the language that one uses to communicate with the world.

It was the chapter on "Status" that was an eye opener for me. I realized why some acquaintances have remained so !!

As the author says -

Once you understand that every sound and posture implies a status, then you perceive the world quite differently, and the change is probably permanent.

A big part of the book is about getting back in touch with our emotions to spark that flicker of creativity via the theater. To not be afraid of failure. To realize that perhaps peasants who stare at the night sky may feel more. That valuing a person solely by their intelligence is a fallacy. That the person who can dance is probably more superior than word-and-thought-bound people who are unable to dance.

The author cites an example where he views the drawings of kindergarten children and those of adults who were given the same exercise. He was blown away by the creativity displayed by the children. And that is when the thought process changed - that perhaps - children are not to be viewed as immature adults, but that adults should be viewed as atrophied children.

The chapter on the art of the mask is shocking and to some extent I don't think I fully understood it. However the author mentions that mask work is something almost anyone can learn to enjoy and this is because it is very refreshing to be able to shed the personality thrust on oneself by other people.

The part that details how really horrible we are at being original and imaginative is a not surprising but excruciating to read because it is easy to identify how much of creativity is lost in the process of education.

Some quotes -

When a very high-status person is wiped out, everyone feels pleasure as they experience the feeling of moving up a step.

Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. It's a matter of presenting yourself as safe.

Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be 'wrong', which is what our education encourages us to believe. Then we experience ourselves as 'imagining', as 'thinking up an idea', but what we're really doing is faking up the sort of imagination we think we ought to have.

My take : Read if you want to view the world differently, improve creativity and recognize human nature.

2. Chaos by James Gleick

I had to google quite a bit to grasp the terms in this book - 'Sierpiński carpets' , 'Menger sponge', 'Peano curves', 'Koch curves', 'strange attractor' to name a few. Less scientific and more historic the book shows how chaos impacted nearly all fields of scientific explorations with its surprising effects.

It was intriguing to read the consternation and incredulity of scientists towards this locally-unstable-but-globally-stable phenomena across different domains !

The beauty of the mandelbrot designs was when I first came to know about fractals and their infinite variations. There was a time when writing screensavers with just a few lines of code to display these amazing drawings was fun. It just had to respect a few boundary conditions. It was fabulous the infinite variety of shapes - still resembling the original that would be rendered.

It is the contradiction of results that holds one's attention - like 'Menger sponge' - solid lattice that has infinite surface area but zero volume ! Infinite length within finite space - 'Koch curve'.

My only grievance was, chaos theory itself is not delved into in this book. I will have to read another book or perhaps check out youtube for a series on chaos. May be I will finally get to doing that chaos course by Stephen Strogatz which has interested me ever since I read his math articles on nytimes.

My take : Read if you are curious about the journey of how chaos theory was discovered by scientific pioneers.

3. Quiet by Susan Cain

This book is a much needed breath of fresh air !!! In a world filled with type-A personality success stories it was refreshing to read about quiet introverts who nevertheless achieve success and are in fact responsible for some of the great contributions to society.

Studies show that one third to one half of us are introverts. That means if you are not an introvert (I consider myself one) someone around you is. The world needs both types. However it also needs to value its introverts which it does very poorly.

This book answered this question for me - Why I feel recharged after spending time on my own when some of my friends seem to recharge after going out in a group.

Why I talk more in situations where it is more of a one-to-one (or perhaps a 2 - 3) rather than a big group. I tend to stay silent in groups even though I enjoy being part of one.

Nobody belongs to one type all the time. Some of the personality traits are situational. People are not 100% introverted or extroverted always.

However it is shown very clearly that being an introvert cannot be used as a crutch to be unsuccessful. There are many who are introverts and who succeed; the ways are are varied.

I would say the biggest take away from the book is that to be an introvert is not a liability. It is just a different way of interacting with the world and if you recognize your strengths you can definitely achieve your notion of success.

Some quotes -

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas

There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas. I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas. It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent.

We don't need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

My take : Must read.

4. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson

Okay what is a book on death cleaning doing here ? I liked the premise.

What is death-cleaning ? It is a new way of downsizing and organizing (generally for people above 50) but can be undertaken at any age really. The key point which caught my attention was this - to purge items so that your children will not be overburdened with your belongings when you are gone.

I sincerely hope that I am not going to keel over dead soon but to me it is a wonderful to live only with possessions that bring joy and happiness. [Marie Kondo - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up]

Since I am still not going to be carted off to a nursing home yet (I hope life also agrees with this!! ) I juxtapose my minimalism with living with a family. Towards this - I now believe it is the experiences that count more than possessions which may give only fleeting joy.

My take : Read if you like book's premise and minimalism.

5. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

This book was in my TBR pile forever I think. I resisted reading it for a long time fearing it would be very disheartening.

I have visited both Dachau and Auschwitz and have seen the gas concentration chambers - the entire experience was haunting and disturbing. The gruesome holocaust exhibits, the stark art, the bleak landscape will leave an unforgettable impression. My friends and I were mostly silent throughout our visit. It was just so horrifying. And to add insult to injury - "Arbeit macht frei" - "Work sets you free" at the entrance of each camp. Awful !

With this background, reading about how the author found meaning even in such a horrendous situation was astonishing. The author's experience in the concentration camps is harrowing even though it feels as if it is not written with impact in mind. A book that could have been depressing and yet the author finds meaning in 'suffering'. This is what makes the profound impression - that there can be meaning in suffering.

Some of the lessons -

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, or a quest for power, but a quest for meaning.

Three possible sources for meaning - Love, Work and Dignity in Suffering. In work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.

My take : Must read.

6. Distributed Ledger Technology: The Science of the Blockchain by Roger Wattenhofer

So this was the book of the month in my goodreads group and it was a mind bender !! This book so far is the book for which I had to google the most. I watched quite a few videos to follow the theorems and proofs. I am not entirely sure I grasped all the ideas in the book though. My rate of digesting the material was glacial.

This is no introductory book and I think the real audience is probably math and computer science master/doctoral students. It is a deep dive (sink or swim) into distributed systems technologies and the mathematical underpinnings for the same. In fact the 2nd heading should read - "The Math of the Blockchain" and not "Science of the Blockchain"

On a very broad perspective I like the lead up in the chapters from Paxos to Distributed storage. It got me thinking about the math behind decentralized systems with the requirements of integrity, consistency and availability. (Kind of take these things for granted when making an ATM withdrawal !)

My take : Read if working/studying in this technology space. This is more of a study/text book.

7. Entanglement by Amir Aczel

Quantum theory and mechanics is very very weird. Just reading about some of the things that happen at quantum level is mind boggling. It helped to read in the beginning of the book that it confounds the scientists themselves and they do not always 'get it' !

This book talks about entanglement which was detected due to mathematical considerations. Entangled particles transcend space. These particles even if separated by space (miles or light years), what happens to one of them happens to the other instantaneously ! (Remember the gravitational waves in the movie 'Interstellar' ?)

Plus a single quantum particle can interfere with itself. To quote the author -

"The weirdness of quantum mechanics really kicks in when a particle is superposed with itself.

An electron, a neutron, or even an atom, when faced with a barrier with two slits in it, will go through both of them at once."

See ? Mind boggling !!!

My take : A fun and easy book - read if interested in the subject.

Other notable books I read

8. Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

A Bill Gates recommendation (he calls it his new favorite book) and I will link directly to his review here.

My take : Read if you would like to see the world in a more balanced light with the big picture in mind.

9. Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil

This book highlights that we live in a world where the algorithms increasingly
define our lives - getting a loan, getting a job, insurance premiums, admission into schools/colleges and these algorithms are black boxes that are not always fair and are definitely not held accountable for the decisions they make.

With real life stories the author shows how an algorithm can exacerbate any discrimination on the basis of poverty, neighborhood and race. This is the dark underbelly of big data and it is far from the utopia of 'algorithms will be more fair and unbiased' story that gets spun in the media.

Ultimately it asks that we make the companies using these algorithms to be more held more accountable and that there be some feedback mechanism that be used to make mathematical models more fair and non-discriminatory.

My take : Read if you want to get an idea about the dark side of big data/algorithms.

10. Nudge by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein

This book is by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics - and it highlights how small nudges can help us make better decisions (Institutions or a person). To some extent the non-thinking choices we make reminds me of System 1 behavior (Daniel Kahneman - Thinking Fast and Slow).

Basically we are not rational humans as depicted by economics but are mostly lazy, inconsistent and averse to making decisions that require a lot of thought. Nudges are small behavior changes that can be incorporated by companies, governments, institutions and people to help make a better choice. There are no neutral and non-biased choices in life.

My take : Read if you want to engineer default choices that are good for you.

11. Invisibles by David Zweig

I came across this book after reading 'The Quiet" and it was the reference to anesthesiologists that made me want to read it. It made me think of people who do not feel the need of the limelight and yet do their work so well they disappear because their satisfaction comes from the work itself. Anonymous geniuses who do not mind being so !

My take : Read to know about incredibly talented people who do not feel the need for the spotlight.

12. Creation by Adam Rutherford

This book is about synthetic biology. The creation / engineering of different forms of life by manipulating genes. The first part of the book is the journey from how life began and codified itself into DNA.

The second part deals with the application of genetic code manipulation. Areas where it can been used to solve the world's problems - food shortages, disease outbreaks and climate change.

My take : Read if you want to appreciate synthetic biology. The author has made complex information comprehensible.

13. A Mind For Numbers by Barbara Oakley

I took the online course and read the book too. Learning is no longer something we do only in school. Today every one has to be a life long learner and the course as well as the book clearly elucidate what works and what approaches we need to eliminate to learn effectively.

My take : Read to learn the effective methods to be a life long learner.

14. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

This was a re-read for me and it still has the same freshness that I associated with reading it the first time. A sense of the joy of flight and a longing for something beyond the daily grind.