The Gift
Lewis Hyde
Feels supremely important. Reminds me of David Graeber's Debt. Got me thinking of different economies:
time/attention
energy/material
violence
status
gift
Play Anything
Ian Bogost
Play and work are more synonyms than opposites. True play involves taking the world seriously, accepting that the world is bigger than our experience of it. I sense Bogost is on to something very fundamental about the slippery concepts of fun and play. And that this bears on how we should guide our attention.
The Master and His Emissary
Iain McGilchrist
Cannot express yet my profound excitement at how monumental his work feels, both in content and style.
Courting the Wild Twin
Martin Shaw
Recommend the audiobook read by the author, Martin Shaw, a professional story teller. This book features two stories about the Wild Twin, a part of ourselves we cast out long ago but fail to reintegrate it into our lives at great peril.
Rest
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Made me see that my work suffers from what I thought was a rest, but that the research presented here makes clear was the opposite of rest. Applying these principles of rest will make my work better. (and my non-work!) A slam dunk of self-help.
7 Powers
Hamilton Helmer
A laser beam of a book. I will have my kids, business partners, friends make sure they read this for a crystallized framework for thinking about business value. I already return to it because I believe internalizing the 7 Powers concept will help value opportunities and guide my business building. I continue to find that books blurbed by Peter Thiel constitute a powerful reading list.
Running Lean
Ash Maurya
The book's contents is solid gold and may be comprehensive in its coverage of the tactics and approach needed to find product-market fit and thereby not suffer the most common modes of startup failure. I notice Maurya refining the presentation of the material on Youtube, his newsletter, and his leanfoundry modules. The book is THE reference for what have become essential business search principles. I wonder if different presentations may be more effective in conveying the lessons.
The Fabric of Reality
David Deutsch
The single best explanation (or theory) of what is happening in the double slit experiment. The photons act in a way that could be explained by interacting with other photons, but those other photons do not interact with ANYTHING else except the original photons. Hence “shadow” photons. THIS is what is meant by the term multiverse or parallel universes (which is more confusing without this shadow theory).
The End of Certainty
Ilya Prigogine
Midlife - Humanity's Secret Weapon
Andrew Jamieson