What I'm Reading

Finding books worth the time is hard. There are a lot of books and not a lot of time. This recent book looked provocative. The book looks similar to The Mundanity of Excellence – a paper on the stratification of high-performers that I re-read almost once a year. So an entire book on it might be worth the time. Then I read one of the featured blurbs. “Geoff Colvin has written a fascinating study of great achievers from Mozart to Tiger Woods, and he has brilliantly highlighted the fact that great effort equals great success....

To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter – Vladimir Bukovsky’s autobiography about his life in the Soviet Union. A little longer than I might otherwise have liked, but the nuggets of wisdom in his life’s story and the reality of what he went through made it worth it for me. His dealings with a government that values ideology above all else were particularly eye-opening. Here he is on the essence of the struggle in the Soviet Union....

Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin: Pondering the Implications of the 2020 Election – John Piper’s short post on the 2020 election and how he plans to vote. Agree wholeheartedly with his observations about what is being overrated/underrated by many Evangelical Christians in regards to politics. I’m of the opinion that a Christian’s witness to the world is better served by staying out of politics in most cases (a standard I admit I regularly fail to hold myself)....

Predictable Identities – an excellent set of brief posts on how humans think and interact. Most of the social and behavioral psychology things I’ve read over the past 6 years have representation here. The Constitution of the United States – I’ve never actually read the whole thing. It’s remarkably brief. I had to look up explanations for quite a few sections that were a bit obscure in their phrasing. Antifragile – I started this book months ago and am getting back into it to finish....