By Cixin Liu
Long ago I abandoned fantasy and science fiction genres. I can't pinpoint exactly when but it was around the time that I started to find my own life more interesting and engaging than the books I was reading. I bit off on the hype surrounding this novel for a couple of reasons. First, I was interested in reading a non-Western science fiction novel to see what might be different. Second, I have to credit scifi writers for having an imagination for distant futures not yet realized. That's not a skill I've developed or probably ever will. As long as you don't ask for too much more then Three Body Problem was worth it. I've also forgotten how poorly written are the novels in these genres. Even giving Liu a little quarter the writing, dialogue, and character development are about on par with an Ayn Rand novel. And I get it. The value is in the idea not the journey to the idea. But still, if the ride isn't that memorable then I'd just rather read a long-form essay.
¿Quién mato a Palomino Molero?
by Mario Vargas LlosaA short novel set in 1970s Peru. MVL based the novel on the true story of a young enlisted airmen whose murder in Talara was covered up by the military. This event took place far away from Lima and the center of political power but illustrated the extent by which the military and the dictatorship was unaccountable to anyone but themselves. Another MVL novel about power and corruption it is truly a masterpiece. Each subsequent story I read confirms for me the absolute correctness of MVL's Nobel. I read this in Spanish to continue to develop language skills and prepare for the Defense Language Proficiency Test.
Conversación en Princeton con Rubén Gallo
By Mario Vargas Llosa
During the academic year 2014-2015 MVL co-taught a course at Princeton on Latin American politics and literature. Oh, how I wish I could have participated. Thankfully, Ruben Gallo and his team transcribed the lectures and discussion for the rest of us. There are lectures on several of MLV's novels, his theory of history and literature and the threat of terrorism in the 21st century. This is an excellent companion book to his works.
By Karl Ove Knausgaard
The fifth 600+ page book in Knausgaard's series picks up his life after high school when he enters a writer's academy workshop, university, and his early 20s. I found his introspection and mental processing about being a writer and wanting to be a writer fascinating. The doubt and fear he experiences are particularly poignant. One of the centers of gravity of the fourth book is Knausgaard's father and in this book, the narrative circles back to the first book's recounting of his father's death.
Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
By Tyler Cowan
In podcast interviews about his book, Tyler reveals that he worked on Stubborn Attachments for 20+ years. This is his prescription for a better world. His central observation is that sustained economic growth made our world an amazing place and created an unfathomable amount of what he calls Wealth Plus. This is his term for the combination of money, health, physical security, food security, education, etc. that expanded rapidly for nearly every single human being today compared to 1000 or 100 years ago. Economic growth enables pluralistic values. Rich societies don't have to choose between caring for the old or caring for orphans they can do both. His point is that we should lower our net present discounting or increase our time-horizon out to near infinity when making policy decisions. That is to say, taking into account future generations' needs and welfare. Bottom line is that we should focus like a laser on maximizing economic growth that increases Wealth Plus with the only limiting factor being human rights. According to Tyler, this will increase the Wealth Plus of future generations by a much faster rate than the US's measly 2% GDP growth rate today, increase the number of values our economy/culture/society can support, and increase the probability of humanity's survival.
By Wes McKinney
By Bill Lubanovic
Both books come from O'Reilly Press and are excellent. Introducing Python was an invaluable reference as I went through the Codecademy coursework. Honestly, it's pretty funny for a textbook. Python for Data Analysis is also well written and useful but data wrangling (and Data Engineering) is one of the least enjoyable parts of data science. As a grad student, I don't think I really appreciated that most of the data sets I analyzed were already in a usable form. That's hardly ever the case to my chagrin.
