Reading List

2026

Finished

  • Super communicators - Charles Duhigg
  • Hidden Potential - Adam Grant
  • The Voices of Marrakesh - Elias Canneti
  • A woman in the polar night - Christiane Ritter
  • Silence - Erling Kagge

Unfinished

  • A writer’s diary v1, v2 - Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Exhalations - Ted Chiang
  • Working - Robert Caro
  • Other minds - Peter Godfrey-Smith
  • The river of doubt - Candice Millard
  • The courage to be disliked - Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi

2025

Finished

  • Super Forecasting - Dan Gardner and Philip E. Tetlock
  • Replacing guilt - Nate Soares
  • An examined life - Stephen Grosz
  • Feasts and Fasts - Collen Taylor Sen
  • Four thousand weeks (audiobook) - Oliver Burkeman
  • Tiny beautiful things (audiobook) - Cheryl Strayed
  • Endurance (audiobook) - Alfred Lansing

Unfinished

  • Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
  • The screwtape letters - CS Lewis
  • Either/Or - Søren Kierkegaard
  • The Overstory - Richard Powers
  • The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

Notes

A woman in the polar night - Christiane Ritter

I myself stand forlornly by the water’s edge. The power of this worldwide peace takes hold of me, although mu senses are unable to grasp it. And as though I were unsubstantial no longer there, the infinite space penetrates through me and swells out, the surging of the sea passes through my being, and what was once a personal will dissolves like small cloud against the inflexible cliffs. I am conscious of the the immense solitude around me. There is nothing that is like me, no creature in whose aspect. I might retain a consciousness of my own self; I feel that limits of my being are being lost in this all-too-powerful nature, and for the first time time I have a sense of the divine gift of companionship. - page 101

But it is also true that one will never experience it the arctic anything s that one has not oneself brought there. - page 110

Bewildering beyond anything is the wild howling of the wind against the unmoving gleaming face of the frozen earth, and the musically gentle dance of the northern lights in the sky. I try to find similes to convey the bewildering strangeness of this experience. I think the contrasts in perception make the same impact on our feelings as would, for example, the playing of the noisy Berlioz symphony in a theater where the stage is set in a scenery of classic calm. Or as if we saw a serenely smiling man commit murder, murder everything that comes within range of his smile. The polar night displays the world in a clash of rhythms that make is Central Europeans dizzy. - page 129

Some of the dogs are lying on the roof of the hut, the others in the snow. One of them slowly rises, his black coat rimmed with frost. He looks at me with large serious eyes, asking nothing and saying nothing, remote from the world and from reality, and yet full of a deep and dreaming life, the same secret life that seems to be hidden everywhere in this quiet land. - page 182

No, the Arctic does not yield its secret for the price of a ship’s ticket. You must live through the long night, the storms, and the destruction of human pride. You must have gazed on the deadness of all things to grasp their livingness. In the return of light, in the magic of the ice, in the life-rhythm of the animals observed in the wilderness, in the natural laws of all being, revealed here in their completeness, lies the secret of the Arctic and the overpowering beauty of its lands. - page 215

Below, on the Lyngen’s small companionway, all the women are standing; they embrace me as though each of them were my own mother. - page 214

The Voices of Marrakesh - Elias Canneti

The unseen

I have said that another feeling choked me as I slunk away: pride. I was proud of the bundle because it was alive.

What a beautiful way to write about a beggar! I feel love and care that’s being placed here. It’s more the empathy. It draws emotions that I can’t understand but can say are beautiful. I picture the sad reality of suffering but I also see the beauty that the author bestows on the person.

Storytellers

Their language was as important to them as mine to me. Words were their nourishment, and they let no one seduce them into exchanging it for a better form of nourishment.

Super communicators - Charles Duhigg

  • First you have to figure out what type of conversation are you having. There are three types of conversations. What is this really about? Is this about logical questions? Is this about how do we feel? Who are we?
  • Every conversation is a negotiation. The first thing you need to do is figure out what does everyone want and how should you talk about it.
  • Is this a practical decision? Then lean into data and reasoning.
  • Is this an empathetic decision? Lean into stories and compassion.
  • Once we know what people want from a conversation, we need to work out how to give it to them. How to engage in a quiet negotiation so that their needs are met as well as our own. That requires conducting experiments to reveal how we’ll make decisions together. This is called the matching principle. Recognizing what kind of conversation is occurring then aligning with others and inviting them to align with us. Matching is understanding someone’s mindset. What kind of logic they find persuasive. What tone and approach makes sense to them and then speaking their language. It requires explaining clearly how we ourselves are thinking and making choices so that others can match us in return.
  • Rule 1 Pay attention to what kind of conversation is occurring. Rule 2 Share your goals and ask what others are seeking. Rule 3 Ask about others feelings and share your own. Rule 4 Explore if identities are important to this discussion.
  • Do you want to be helped, hugged or heard?
  • Preparing for a conversation.
    • What are the two topics you most want to discuss?
    • What is one thing you hope to say that shows what you want to talk about?
    • What is one question you will ask that reveals what others want?
  • How do you decide to become a teacher? This question reveals someone’s beliefs or values.
  • Are you glad you went to law school? This question reveals someone’s judgment.

Hidden potential - Adam Grant

  • Become a sponge. Be curious, shed your ego, be growth driven,
  • Transform daily grind into a source of daily joy.
  • Willpower won’t cut it. Build a scaffolding that you can rely upon when faced with challenges.
  • Enjoy the process. Forget about the outcome. Taking joy in the process is called harmonious passion.
  • Deliberate Play is a mix of deliberate practice and free play.
  • In some sales class, they practiced delivery play by setting up a game where students have to be customers and salespersons. And the rule was they’ll have to have conversation for three minutes nonstop. They can’t let the ball drop. And they found out that with this exercise, the students performed better at sales when they sold tickets for a professional sports team. They also enjoyed the course more.
  • Passion for one task can lead to neglect of the less exciting task.
  • People with most discipline don’t rely on willpower to push through a strenuous situation. They change the situation to make it less strenuous.
  • Break the monotony, make it fun, create scaffolding so that you don’t stumble onto the urges of boredom or reward or getting out of anything.
  • Success is never linear. It’s usually a loop. So sometimes you have to stop, go back down and find a new route. There are usually no directions, only a compass.
  • Experts don’t make the best guides because they have forgotten what it was like to be a novice, have multiple guides. A single mentor might not be able to help.
  • Don’t ask your mentors to pick their brains. Ask them to retrace their route. The goal is to get your guides to drop pins, to jog their memories of paths long forgotten. You might inquire about the crossroads they faced. Those could be skills they sought out, advice they took or ignored, or changes they made.
  • Languishing is a feeling of stagnation and emptiness. It’s not depression and it’s also not excitement. It’s where you feel meh. Taking a detour is a good way to escape languishing. The idea is to make progress on something, specifically if it’s not related to the thing that you’re stuck at. For instance, if you’re feeling meh at work, you can find a hobby that’s different from the type of work you do and make progress there. That would make you be excited about work.
  • When you get stuck on your way up a mountain, it’s better to shift in reverse then to stand still. As you take U-turns and D-turns, you’ll feel as if you’re going in circles. In the short run, a straight line brings faster progress, but in the long run, loops lead to the highest peaks.
  • Progress is rarely noticeable at a snapshot in time — It unfolds over extended periods of time.