Ben Sima

Category: Reading Notes

  • *Native Son* by Richard Wright

    I read half of this book yesterday and came away with a strong impression that this book is I, Robot before I, Robot was I, Robot (they were published at roughly the same time, with Native Son appearing slightly earlier). At first glance this book looks like a commentary on the oppression of black people […]

  • Lolita (first read)

    I finally read this last December or so at the recommendation of a friend (who is much more widely read than I). I look forward to a second read at some point in the future. Below are my notes from the first read. They are extracted from a message to my friend, forgive the unpolished […]

  • The Castle by Kafka

    Everything is detached in this book, alienated. Even the third person narration gives a sense of alienation. K. is a strange person in a strange land, he cannot quite fit into any scene of the story. And yet the events are all told as from K.’s perspective, which gives a warped view of the world. […]

  • The Austrians and the Swan: Birds of a Different Feather by Mark Spitznagel

    From The Austrians and the Swan: Birds of a Different Feather by Mark Spitznagel: To the Austrians, the [economic] process is decidedly non-random, but operates (though in a non-deterministic way, of course) under the incentives of entrepreneurial “error-correction” in the economy. In a never ending series of steps, entrepreneurs homeostatically correct natural market “maladjustments” (as […]

  • The Big Short by Michael Lewis

    The Big Short book reads like a behind the scenes telling of the movie (Steve Carroll was awesome). It still seems too fantastic to be true. Lewis captured a kind of “fantastical” element in his retelling of… a financial story. So that’s pretty impressive. Below are my Kindle notes and highlights, exported with Bookcision.

  • *They Thought They Were Free* by Milton Mayer

    My notes from They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. Published in 1955, this book is a collection of stories by Mayer, a Jewish-American, as he interviewed 10 Germans in Kronenberg. Each of them were involved with Nazism in some form, but none of them were very high in the ranks of leadership, in […]

  • February Reading

    Currently finishing A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel DeLanda. Fascinating re-thinking of history using nonlinear metaphors, but sometimes I wonder if he pushes the metaphors too far; I don’t have enough background knowledge to say either way. I’ve got They Thought They Were Free (via pushcx) from the library which I’ll start this […]

  • Recent Reading

    I’m constantly reading. I used to do book reviews on here, but that got old pretty fast. From now on I’ll just give a list of what I’ve been reading recently, and a short blurb about each book. Here are some books and collections I’ve been spending time with lately. Business Books Good to Great […]

  • A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

    Every once in a while you find a book that speaks to you in a way you don’t understand. The story in itself ebbs and flows like the tide of water on a beach of characters that teach you more about yourself than you can consciously comprehend. The elegant prose so enraptures you in its […]

  • Lucky or Smart by Bo Peabody — “Smart Enough to Realize I Was Getting Lucky”

    I’m smack in the middle of a personal challenge to read at least one book every week. The erudition section of this blog is my attempt to chronicle my challenge and galvanize a lifetime of curiosity and learning. If you have read any of these books before, or happen to pick one up and find […]