Books

Besides having mesmerizing novels I love to read, Murakami wrote novels reliably over the years. He writes like running a marathon and always finishes with a good time. I like running, but I am far away from being a good runner. So if one of my favorite writers published a book about running, I read it. Murakami puts so much life and real experience into his fiction that I was curious about what he can tell me when he is writing non-fiction. ...

After finishing his stoic trilogy (Ego is the Enemy, Obstacle is the Way, Stillness is Key) Ryan Holiday embarked on a new journey covering the classic virtues: courage, discipline, and wisdom. This is the first book of the new series. I read previous stoic books by Ryan (and some others like the Perennial Seller) and got great first impressions of the new series. I like Ryan Holidays' style and the way he cherry-picks great stories to prove a point. His books are probably not the best historical or philosophical accounts of the ancient era, but the way he tells stories is inspiring. ...

I am good at researching stuff, and coming up with conclusions but using these learnings to impact any decision whether that be in marketing or in life is not my strongest point. As Chip & Dan Heath, the authors of Made to Stick explain, we are spending a significant amount of time getting the Answer, but compared to that we nearly don’t even think about how to present the outcome. ...

Morgan Housel is one of my favorite financial writers. He is an ex-columnist of The Wall Street Journal and The Motley Fool, his unique style of combining personal finance with global economic trends has already produced writings that I can't stop recommending. In his book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness, Housel uses interesting stories to illustrate our behavior towards money. The author argues that how smart we are and how we behave has little to do with how well we manage money. Morgan Housel writes about these behaviors, tips, and psychological tricks. ...

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder is the pinnacle of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s work. In his previous books like Fooled by Randomness or The Black Swan the author always introduces one big idea and complements it with additional volumes. Antifragile is the summary of these concepts, the world view where all of the big ideas of Taleb are involved and are put into a frame. My Comment: In Black Swan Taleb writes that an essay is a meditation not a scientific report. It is good to remember his observations when reading Antifragile. ...

We are looking for patterns and copying them our whole life. We choose schools, apply for jobs, buy houses and construct our life to be similar to our peers. Sometimes with the goal to be seen as successful, but often just because we don’t have better ideas. We follow the Default Path, while there are other options. The author, Paul Millerd is a former strategy consultant turned writer, and digital creator. He shares his departure from the Default Path and his ongoing exploration of the Pathless Path. ...

The best works and most interesting solutions that I came across in the last few years all came from the intersection of different disciplines. This is particularly true for SEO, whether we are looking at the use of machine learning for search engine optimization, utilizing the mental models of the MBA curriculum for getting management buy-in, or planning SEO projects in an agile way. These are partially the reasons why I like to read books outside of my expertise. Also picking a generalist mentality when choosing my next read is more fun. There are more new ideas, you can read interesting stories, and you rarely come across the same concepts repackaged in another boring book. ...

There are several companies strongly relying on their network. Airbnb, Tinder, Uber, Facebook, and the list goes on. None of them would be as valuable today as they are without their interconnected user base or dense inventory. Regardless of their market type, they share certain characteristics and often face the same challenges. Andrew Chen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who led Rider Growth at Uber earlier took the challenge to write the ultimate guide to networked products. ...

While there is no data to back up the upside of being organized in most of the mentioned areas, having too much order has definite downsides. A messy home shows your personality. A cluttered one is like every other one. If you can find your notes in a pile of papers then what is the upside of categorizing and putting away those papers? The definite disadvantage of aiming for too much order is losing time. You can argue for order with increased productivity, but what happens when you take into calculation the time lost during organizing and decluttering. ...

Most SEO books and articles are discussing up-and-coming tactics which everyone is already utilizing. These resources are the straightforward way to achieve mediocre results even if you do anything based on best practices. Yet here is a book that shares some practical tips but what it is strong in is strategy. The author, Eli Schwartz has led the SEO team in SurveyMonkey and worked together with websites like Quora, Zendesk, and Mixpanel. Schwartz has practical experience with the nuances of SEO but in his book, he also took a step back and is explaining the basics of SEO in an unexpectedly easy-to-understand way. ...