There are a very few people whom I call my mentors. And this book is the one.

It is not overly complicated, nor does it involve advanced writing techniques. It only offers a set of rules to pull your messy thoughts out of the air and organize them into a standard, readable format.

This book teaches you a new language. A language of writing.

I thought it was gonna be yet another Silicon Valley memoir with mostly generic advice on building startups. But it wasn't. Build has unfiltered insights from someone who actually shipped legit real products. My notes in the bigger reflection (click the title.)

Christian completely changed the way I think about prompt engineering. I thought if the input was good enough, it would result in better output. "Be specific," for example.

But no. The book argues that the Alignment Problem is inherently architectural, not instructional. And this entire "making the machines like humans" goal (if we can call it so, to begin with) is innately absurd. Humans are contradictory. We say X, but we do Z. We hold certian values opposite to each other. In short, we are complex. And complex is the problem to deal with when it is the matter of creating seemingly the most aligned thinking machines.

Amazing read. Christian manages to offer a detailed, narrative-based insights into the inner architectures of how AI works.

This is the most insightful book on writing I've read. The author's philosophy is simple: the sentence is the fundamental unit of writing. If you focus on making each sentence great, your writing will be great.

He gives practical tips on how to improve your sentences by eliminating non-essential words and he shares his method for sentence creation.

Beyond the quality of the author's writing philosophy, the book is written with a level of intention and concision I didn't know was possible.

The value density of this book is what all books should aspire to be (and only the best books can compete, like Zero to One).

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn has one central claim: scientific progress doesn't assemble smoothly but advances through periodic ruptures. Kuhn calls them paradigm shifts.

One of the three writing gems, alongside Several Short Sentences About Writing and The Elements of Style.

Zinsser believes and strongly advocates that strong writing begins with clear thinking. He urges the readers of his book to constantly ask themselves: “What am I trying to say?” and to prune ruthlessly if sections lack purpose.

If Klinkenberg focused on making sure every sentence has purpose, Zinsser does the exact same with the words.

The book is poorly organized. Feels like Uncle Taleb wrote it in more like a stream-of-consciousness mode and packed it to get published. Taleb is blunt, obstuse, and very often right. The Economist even described reading it as as "being trapped in a cab with a cantankerous and over-opinionated driver."

You can read more of my notes if you click.

The bible of starting a massive technology company. Anyone interested in startups needs to read this.

The first principles on (1) what to work on (2) how to work on it to create massive value and (3) how to capture part of the value to build a valuable company.

Isaac Asimov said this was his favorite of his own writing, which made me curious to read it.

I don't want to spoil anything, but you should read it right now and then come back. It takes less than 30 minutes to finish. You can find it here. It's worth it. You can click into my notes after.

I went into the book expecting another iteration of self-help or life advice books, but ended up really liking it. The author organizes all of Naval's online advice into a nice structure around achieving happiness and financial freedom in life.

Very high readability, like reading through a series of tweet storms for the entire book, and great boiled down insights on time allocation, what to optimize for, how to be happy, and more.

Capitalism Realism, Fisher defines, is a widespread belief that capitalism is the only practical political and economic system and that it is borderline impossible to imagine any alternative to it.

Fisher says capitalist realism has permeated all the aspects of our contemporary world, affecting our work, education, culture, and even well-being, mental health.

The book later goes on to talk about the internal flaws of capitalism.

Fisher identified capitalism realism but didn't offer alternatives. It lowkey disappointed me at first. But when I read online reviews, I understood that his point was simple: liberation starts by understanding the problem-and any ready-made blueprint would mean that the problem wasn't yet solved. In fact, the whole point of the book would be futile if it had offered the alternatives. Smart.

This piece by Bierce shows his storytelling genius. The plot is chaotic; it feels disjointed at first, with paragraphs scattered throughout for the reader to make sense of the meaning themselves. But Bierce had the full command. He was playing with the depth of his language and controlling the perspective and structure in every corner possible.

The Plague compliments The Myth of Sisyphus. And the overall idea remains the same: you ask meaning from life and it responds with absurdity. It doesn't answer your question, but throws catastrophes your way. Press the title to read more notes.

In a world full of randomness and disorder, building things that benefit from volatility is the only way to ensure robustness. Taleb calls these things that gain from disorder antifragile.

He highlights how everything that has stood the test of time is antifragile, and shows us how to use antifragility to understand the world, improve our decision making, and build more robust systems.

He constantly makes fun of people he disagrees with throughout the book, making his writing unique and entertaining (and also very salty, likely distasteful to some).

His discussions on the barbell concept (on managing risk and reward), iatrogenics (on harmful intervention), the value of optionality, and via negativa (on improvement through removal) are particularly insightful.

Nietzsche claims that the modern morality is not universal truth. He says morality is a historical invention born out of ressentiment, the pyschological revenge of the weak against the strong. By that, he claims we can't say something is "good" or "evil."

The writing is intellectually exhilarating, and Nietzsche's books, in general, mostly read like poems rather than books. But when I finished the book, I found it ultimately unsatisfying. And left me with more questions than answering the tangible ones. Perhaps that's the point—but I'm still left wondering what to actually build with all this rubble.

The title suggests the central claim. Uncle Taleb thinks that we sometimes underestimate the role of luck and randomless in life, mistaking random outcomes for skill or determinism. In the book, Taleb gives concrete ideas as to how this is the case.

The book became very popular in Tashkent bookstores at some point. And I saw many business gurus carrying it around. The curiosity got the better of me, and I picked it up. Initially thought it was another generic business literature with "common sense" insights. But no. The book threw me a couple of marketing tips that I am applying with Agora.

35 years of research reduced to 6 general rules. Cialdini teaches the art of persuasion. Explains why some people simply say "yes" when negotiating and why some don't. He also talks about how to save yourself from being a victim of one such "persuasion" trick.

The rules: reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. I gave my thoughts on each. Click the title to read more.

Seneca has one message here which is quite simple: life is short, but we make it much shorter by spending time on things that are unimportant.

As simple as it is, it's necessary reminder, and Seneca delivers it in a unique way that brings up relevant points and makes you seriously think about how you're spending your time.

"Big brother is watching!" 1984 by George Orwell is not a dystopian fiction, at least for me. It feels like a manual. The Party's control is not due to its cruelty but to its precision. Controlling the language controls thoughts. Controlling the past controls the present and the future. And Newspeak's core mission? Making dissent linguistically impossible.

Many think 1984 is about an authoritarian regime and how it isn't nice. Indeed, it is. But it isn't JUST about the authoritarian regime. The main emphasis comes down to controlling the thoughts. It was Orwell's intellectual mission, after all. Politics and English Language talks about the same idea: muddy language leads to muddy thinking.

The disturbing part is how much we've already adopted without needing the Thought Police. The algorithms control our feed, our worlds. That in turn controls the thoughts.

And Orwell thinks we must think more (on our own). And to think well, we need to write well.

The only audibook in the entire reading log. I wanted to read at first, but someone reminded me of Matthew's aromatic Texas accent and soothing storytelling. I would not miss this! Bought the Audible membership specifically for this.

The book is Matthew's memoir filled with philosophical insights, stories, prayers, poems, advice, and memorable quotes. Matthew presents them in a chronological order across his fifty years alive. And all these little pieces of his ideas center on one singular philosophy of his (which is also the book title): Greenlights!

Greenlights is about those little moments in our lives where opportunities open up and the life says yes. And Matthew offers his personal stories when he experiences those greenlights.

It is like any typical memoir. Nothing too extraordinary. I am putting 7 because Matthew is a great actor + he has such a soothing recitation.

I expected more from the book. But later found out that it was written for the general public: policy-makers and other folks not deeply involved in tech. So I was less harsh on the rating.

The book is compact. Mustafa points out two problems that may emerge in the coming wave of the future: artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology. The book discusses how these two spheres are positioned to reshape government, society, and global order as we know it. And Mustafa argues we should be cautious about the whole development as we are approaching the critical threshold.

It was fairly a predictable book, but, just like 12 Rules of Life by Peterson, it had many unnecessary stories that I had to read. I hope such books were more crisp.

I am putting 7 because the problems are described with clarity. Not fluff. But it was written for the general public, so I didn't get much useful insight.

Labyrinths is an interesting book. Borges builds elaborate architectures of knowledge that don't go anywhere. His story about the infinite library is novel, but it is a beautiful thought experiment lacking any actionable wisdom. He shows how knowledge systems become traps, but doesn't tell you how to build better ones.

If there is anything I have learnt from Borges, then it is that understanding the cage doesn't mean you have escaped it.

I saw the CEO reading this, so I picked it up. (talk about mimetic desire.) I am not friends with self-help books, so I was at first hesitant what the book would uncover for me. But it was actually different.

Unlike other business self-help authors, Howortz tackles with the real challenge of leadership. Not generic formulas or simple answers. But uncertain, messy, and emotionally taxing realities of leadership. The ones without clear solutions.

Howortz argues that the hard thing about businesses is not hiring talent, recruiting top engineers, or designing a perfect pitch deck. But the emotionally difficult choices: laying people off, handling entitlement from top performers, resolving when teams function bad, and enduring psychological strain when things go wrong.

I read Taleb's The Black Swan this summer. Right after realizing that I wasn't going to college (again). Right after realizing that most of what we're taught to predict is unpredictable anyway. (Click the title to read more).

Kurzweil popularizes and explains the concept of Singularity in this book. Singularity is a point around 2045 when AI will surpass human intellect, altering how society fundamentally functions. Kurzweil backs this up with exponential growth data across computing, genetics, and nanotech. He shows that technological acceleration follows predictable patterns, and that the progress is not linear, but exponential because new inventions make newer inventions more plausible. (What it might have taken the entire 20th century can be achieved in 20 years in the 21st century).

His optimism about merging with machines and achieving immortality is compelling but somehow uncanny too. The entire thing depends on whether we can properly manage all these advancements that develop faster than our ability to fully grasp their consequences. Either way, we're not prepared for what's coming.

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli is a manual for rules who want to exercise power and authority aggressively. And it doesn't waste time on insights into virtue and justice.

Machiavelli says effective leadership has nothing to do with being a good person (it's about being effective). And he wrote this book for Lorenzo de' Medici (who probably never read it) after getting fired and tortured, so there's this "screw it, this is how power actually works" vibe to the whole thing. Rulers should look virtuous while actually being ruthlessly pragmatic. It's better to be feared than loved. But one should ideally avoid being hated since that tends to end with an assassination. You can read more if you click the title.

The book is about creativity. And how to find creativity in our age of GPT's and Claudes. The author Kleon organizes the insights around 10 lessons on creativity. And he is pushing one idea forward: any creativity comes from past exposure and nothing is original. And (if ever) if something is original then it is our thinking that is the original thing about the entire process--the input going through our minds and becoming and output.

This explains the title of the book: "stealing." Kleon says (because nothing is original) we have to steal. But stealing is not like plagiarising. You can still "steal" ideas. But you need to bring thinking to the equation. Coying alone is still stealing.

A great manifesto and practical handbook on spurring creativity. Coupled with On Writing Well and Several Short Sentences about Writing, this book becomes a real weapon for a careful reader.

Das Kapital has the densest prose among the books I've read. A lot of complex philosophical and economic concepts are being mixed. Somewhere in the middle, I felt like giving up. But pushed through. And yes, I read the book to understand why my Grandpa is an avid supporter of the past soviet system.

There is a central argument that Marx presents: capitalism is inherently flawed and it always leads the bourgeoisie (capitalists, or the owners of the means of production) to exploit the proletariat (the working class, the labor). I wrote more about surplus value in the notes section. (press the title to read more)

The Myth of Sisyphus is a short interpretational essay on a famous Greek myth: the story of Sisyphus.

Sisyphus is condemned by the Gods. He is forced to push the boulder to the top of the mountain. And as he reaches the top, the boulder rolls back. Sisyphus starts agian. And he is met with the same loop of pushing the boulder (again and again). But Sisyphus doesn't give up. He becomes the absurd hero, fulfilling his punishment for eternity, knowing it is all absurd.

It was Camus's way of showing that life is absurd, inherently meaningless. You ask for meaning from life. And you are met with nothing. Life doesn't respond with a carefully planned framework to live your life. And Camus advocates for "revolt." He says we need to build our meaning if life doesn't offer one. Because, as per him, "one has to imagine Sisyphus happy!"

I initially thought The Stranger was nihilistic. But it is absurdist. The book narrates the adventures of Mersault, a man who has a rather radial yet authentic approach to living.

Mersault doesn't care. Doesn't care about literally anything. He doesn't express emotions. No crying. No grieve. No really anything. He is emtpy, lacking average normal people have.

The book's real question is about whether we're willing to live honestly in a world without inherent meaning, or if we'll pretend to feel what we're supposed to feel just to fit in, be like others. Meursault pays the price for his honesty, which says something uncomfortable about what society actually values.

A crisp, short read. But hard to digest.

Fight Club hits different when everyone keeps telling it's life-changing. The beginning drags. All that insomnia stuff and support groups—I kept waiting for it to get good. Then Tyler shows up, and it is hard to put down the book.

The fighting isn't really about fighting, which sounds pretentious but it's true. It's more about that feeling when one is stuck between being a kid and whatever comes next. Everyone acts like they have it figured out but they're just buying groceries and pretending. Tyler's whole anti-consumerism philosophy makes sense until one realizes he's just replacing one set of rules with another.

Still processing the ending. Feels like Palahniuk was trying too hard to blow my mind.

My entrance to Stoicism. The book overlapped with the period of my life when I needed to disciplined. And I can confidentally say the book served its purpose.

The book is not like a traditional book. It is Aurelius's own letters to himself. And those letters come with rules for a virtuous life.

Some of the rules include: accepting what you can't control, focusing on your own thoughts and actions, living according to nature/reason, dealing with mortality, maintaining virtue regardless of circumstances.

In short, Meditations is an amazing entrance into Philosophy and offers practical advice on handling difficult people, managing emotions, and finding tranquility through philosophical practice. m Sometimes, feels unreal that a revered emperor of Rome would run into similar life problems as yet-immature teenager from Tashkent, centuries later.

Asimov fulfilled Machiavelli's description of a futurist: "Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times." The Foundation Trilogy is not prophecy. Asimov consulted the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire to create his sci-fi world.

But mapping out an entire Galactic Empire using the Roman Empire as a base wasn't meant for a lazy analogy. Asimov, I believe, was testing out his hypothesis: if civilizational decline follows predictable patterns, can we engineer our way out?

Hari Seldon is one of the main protagonists. He is a mathematician who invented a statistical framework called Psychohistory. Psychohistory would analyze the past patterns and predict the future (on a grander scale, not on an individual level). He finds that the Galactic Empire is doomed to collapse, with eventual chaos followed for 30 thousand years.

The Foundation is especially compelling right now. We are living through our own version of late-empire decline. We have institutions that no longer solve problems. Bureaucracies that exist to perpetuate themselves. Systems running on momentum rather than purpose. And too many standards that make the point of "standard" pointless. Like Rome's grain dole, we have programs designed to manage problems rather than get rid of them. (I talked about this in one of the essays in the writing section: Exit).

Asimov says the Foundation is the solution. We need to preserve knowledge for better times, so we can go through chaotic times faster. Akin to a prescription written way before the illness kicks in. The right prescription helps alleviate the pain and keeps the immune system at stable levels while the body deals with the problem.

The collapse is inevitable. But we can prepare for it. We can build the Foundation that survives the fall.

The Republic is not a speculative philosophy containing some ideology. It was a blueprint of what Plato thought should be implemented. Plato's ideal state is authoritarian: a strict class system determined by "natural" ability, censorship of art and poetry, selective breeding, and philosopher-kings wielding absolute power. Plato genuinely thought deception was acceptable if it maintained social order.

The allegory of the cave is great. But Plato uses it to self-serve. He argues philosophers are the enlightened minority who've escaped ignorance. And thus, they must be entitled to rule over the public, whom Plato calls still chained in the darkness of the cave. It's a convenient philosophy for politics: intellectuals deserve power because they're intellectuals.

Individual autonomy disappears entirely. Everyone exists to serve the collective, and the collective serves the philosophers' vision of "the Good."

What's good, however, is that Plato keeps questioning. What is justice? Who should rule? How do we structure society? But his conclusions are dystopian. The Republic is less a guide than a warning about what happens when abstract ideals overtake human complexity and freedom.

But the book's legacy is undeniable. It shaped Western political thought for centuries. But reading it critically means understanding that just because ideas are ancient and philosophically rigorous doesn't mean they're wise. Plato might've gotten people thinking. But he also got a lot wrong.

Zakaria blends a personal memoir, the history of higher education, and advocacy for a balanced approach in education in his book.

I found the book useful, especially since I was applying to American colleges. As someone who had experienced a blend of English curriculum and rote-learning-based edu systems throughout my school years, I couldn't imagine what "liberal arts" was and its significance. The book offers the philosophy of liberal arts. Zakaria starts with the origins (the Greeks, the Renaissance, and the American tradition) and also addresses some of the critiques expressed (perceived impracticality, elitism, and cost).

I wish my soviet-inherent public school teachers in Uzbekistan would read this: "A liberal education teaches you how to think, not what to think."

Outliers analyzes how success works. Gladwell offers a number of interesting ideas that he thinks define the successful. And surely, the rules are not universal, but some of his rules became so popular that hustle-culture groups made them their mottos: "No rest until 10 thousand hours."

Many heard about the "10 thousand hour" rule. That is, you need 10 thousand hours to become wildly successful in something. Gladwell didn't come up with it. It was this psychologist Anders Ericsson (published in 1993) who found that an elite violinist would accumulate around 10 thousand hours of practice before their 20s. Gladwell got the idea and popularized it. He gave the examples with The Beatles and Bill Gates. But Naval thinks it is not 10 thousand hours. But 10 thousand iterations that takes one to get successful. He said hours alone don't bring experience. One needed to have quality experience and learn from their mistakes to get successful. He also pointed out that it is not exactly 10 thousand surely. "10 thousand," I think, serves to represent that what it takes to get successful is a lot.

A very original approach to writing a book (but a one time read).

It is a long book, like any other biography, frankly. But it was amazing to read about one of the newer polymaths of our age, understand his vision, and know his background story in a bit more detail.

Pretty straightforward. No complex narration. Vance wrote that he had interviews with Elon himself, so I figure the story is not unrealistic.

The book narrates Elon's early life in South Africa, his move to Canada (and later to the States), and how he established his business ventures: Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and others.

One particular feature of Vance's writing that I liked was how well he could convey Elon's emotional state as his rockets (SpaceX) kept failing and collapsing. And how he didn't even care about money as he was monomanaically focused on his intellectual ambitions.

A good read, but a bit long.

Orwell's Animal Farm is a political allegory. It is about the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.

The plot is about a revolution on a fictional farm. Animals riot and expel their abusive owner, the farmer. Two pigs establish a new government and promote values like "animalism"-all animals are equal.

But the rule changes soon after: "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." By this, Orwell presents how power corrupts those with authority, alluding to the events that had unfolded earlier in the Soviet Union.

There are, after all, mini-revolutions that emerge after the original one.

A compilation of Charlie Munger's best speeches. He focuses on the importance of building multi-disciplinary knowledge and understanding "the big ideas from the big disciplines.

Excellent essays on the psychology of human misjudgement, the surprisingly destructive nature of bad practice in corporate accounting, and using the first principles of psychology to design a plan for a $2T business.

His speeches often don't translate well to writing; the transcribed format misses out on delivery and audience reactions, and the pacing and concision are suboptimal for a book.

Many of the topics lacked broad relevance. Rather than presenting a full picture of Munger's thinking, this book felt like a small slice of some of his ideas with lots of repetition across chapters.

Writing is often hard, even for professionals, so one should approach it "bird by bird" with perseverance. That's Anne Lamott's approach to both writing and life. She says the key to success is often not stressing over the mission and dividing it into mini-steps, completing it step by step, or bird by bird, as her father calls it.

The book is a guide and memoir. And I'll remember Lamott's work for her genuinely honest insights, not writing-focused practicality.

Overall, an amazing read for writers seeking comfort and honesty, but a one-time read.

It is a productivity book. So going into it, I expected to be met with generic studying advice. But Deep Work actually gave practical advice on how to do the deep work.

Cal organizes the book in two neat sections: The Idea (1) and The Rules (2). Press the title for my notes.

The definitive book on building habits. I hesitated to read it because I thought it would be like most self-help books with a few simple concepts that are generally intuitive.

I was very wrong. The book is extremely information-dense with useful strategies to effectively build habits. Every new chapter introduces new actionable tips.

Building habits is a critical skill, so reading this book is critical.

I found the historical references quite amusing, especially the starting part where Peterson talks about the story of Moses and his ten commandments.

But apart from that, the book is an ordinary self-help disguised as philosophy lessons. The problem with these books is they simply keep giving too many stories (I didn't have to learn about how lobsters mate, for example) to push the same idea. I get it. Some have a hard time digesting all these insights. But as I am giving my subjective opinion, I don't like them. The books should be crisp.

"The problem with many writers is they write too much." I saw this line somewhere and I can't get it ouf of my mind whenever I think of self-help books. And this book by Mark Manson is another example of a book when that line is fitting.

There is one basic claim in the entire book: some of the struggles in life are "sweet" struggles and you don't have to lose your energy caring about them. And thus, the book's title: the subtle art of not giving an f.

It is a great concept. It is a worthwhile concept, the one that will solve a lot of psychological problems. But I would rather see this concept written as a mini-essay than an entire book with countless stories and facts. (When and if that day of me publishing my own books comes, it will not exceed 100 pages.)

This book disappointed me. It is similar to most other self-help books: takes one basic idea and chews over it hundred times.

The author's main argument is simple: wake up early because you can do more.

I was at least expecting to receive some tangible advice on forming this early-bird mindset (if ever), but the book doesn't give much tangible advice. Didn't read fully, skimmed through a few sections.

This experience bolsters my opinion: the problem with many books is they just have too much writing and too few core, original ideas.