This post was originally published on Quora on January 1st, 2019.
Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu
Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 5/10
The full title is Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, and this verbose title reflects the repetitious, sometimes tedious nature of the entire book. Acemoglu writes in 500 pages what could have been written in 100: that inclusive political and economic institutions, like democracy and capitalism, are essential to sustained growth and prosperity. It is a really interesting thesis that’s supported by examples from Ancient Rome to modern day United States, but I think there is some factors (most notably size of the country) he omitted. I also think that the book is starting to be outdated, as we see China experience a seemingly stable growth over the past 40 years despite an authoritarian, one-party state. Another example of a country that defies his thesis is Singapore, a small country with draconian laws and regulations ruled by a one-party government that remains prosperous nevertheless. Why Nations Fail is an interesting read that should be taken with a grain of salt.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10
Kahneman’s book is a synthesis of a lot of his research throughout his career as a psychologist, and his ideas are super interesting. It explains why humans act the way we do, even when the action might not rationally be the best decision. I definitely think it’s a must read for everyone, because if you can recognize bad decisions as a result of the illusion of validity, loss aversion, or the endowment effect, you can take a step back and reconsider. These illusions and effects are a result of our brain trying to make life as easy and safe as possible, and this often leads to inaccurate or incorrect decisions. Thinking, Fast and Slow is a great, easy read with examples that will trick you and really convince you that these effects are real!
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
Rating: ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 3/10
This book, written by an MIT physics professor, sometimes reads like a middle school book with cartoon illustrations, and other times reads like a badly written abstract of an article in Science. He talks about what artificial intelligence is (and all his definitions are as vague as possible), and what the future of AI should look like (which he doesn’t take a position on either). He has multiple calls to action for the reader to care about AI and shape the future, because we’re in the middle of a revolution of the same magnitude as the one from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms. Maybe I’m just too critical, but it seems to me that there wasn’t much content in this book other than a bunch of cursory overviews of quantum mechanics, psychology, and philosophy and weak jokes. And he also just name drops everywhere!! He talks at length about the AI conferences he’s organized, and that’s really cool, but then he just names every famous person there, even if it adds nothing to the book!!
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★ 10/10
Min Jin Lee’s writing is absolutely beautiful in this book. You learn a lot about Korean and Japanese history throughout the 20th century. More importantly, while you follow a family through four generations, you learn about loss, love, purpose, and identity. I thought it was similar to East of Eden in the pace of the book, but I loved Pachinko so much more because I saw character’s maturation and development in an Asian environment. Things like family name, pride, and traditions are unfortunately absent from popular American classics. I’m not sure if it was just because I was Asian, or if this happened to all readers, but I was able to connect with the characters more than most books I’ve ever read. The entire book is moving, and it’s made all the more so because it’s underscored the first line of the book: “History has failed us, but no matter”. History and time are indifferent, and in the context of Asian culture, all of the characters’ stubborn, loyal acts, are further emphasized.
“At his burial, Yangjin and her daughter were inconsolable. The next morning, the young widow rose from her pallet and returned to work.”
“seeing him as only Korean — good or bad — was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this as what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human.”
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10
The Kite Runner is actually really similar to Pachinko, with a few notable differences. The first, obviously, is that The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan in the second half of the 20th century, where power over the country switches hands multiple times, from the king to a military leader, to Russian occupation, to terrorist occupation. The second is that it’s told from the point of view from the main character, Amir, not a third person omniscient narrator. The third is that instead of spanning four generations, The Kite Runner only tells of one (with mentions of Amir’s father’s generation and Amir’s child’s generation). I learned a lot about Afghan history and culture. What stood out to me was that Amir, the main character and first person narrator, makes the reader dislike him. I hated him so much, making his transformation really genuine and emotional. It’s a story about finding yourself (again), living with demons in your past, family, honor, and holding on to culture and humanity. The only complaint I have of this book, which is what knocked my rating from a 10 to a 9, was that Amir foreshadows as if he were getting paid for each one. Every major event, and I mean every single one, was foreshadowed.
“[he] was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.”
“Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion.”
“For you, a thousand times over.”
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10
Wonder is a heartwarming story about August (Auggie) Pullman, a kid with severe facial differences entering 5th grade at a public school for the first time. It’s told from 6 different perspectives, but the bulk of the book is from Auggie’s perspective. I found the different perspectives exciting but distracting. One character’s perspective was written with bad grammar and with no capitalization. I’m guessing this was to distinguish one character’s voice from another’s, because I don’t think the author was really able to do that just through varied sentence structure or distinct phrases. If I was paying a little less attention, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell one character’s perspective from another’s. Despite the similar voices of the characters, I do think that Palacio’s choice to tell the same story from six perspectives was effective, because we see the reasoning behind their actions.
Peter's Life 