• (4/5) Black Swan, Nassim Taleb

  Be wary of anyone claiming to predict future events. No one really knows what they’re talking about, except for experts in very specialized fields. Long read, but well written.

• (3/5) Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software, Nadia Eghbal

  Good read about open-source communities. Sections of the book go into way too much detail for me about structures of various communites, but I enjoyed the application of economic ideas (such as the tragedy of commons) to the very real problem of open source code maintenance. Also, loved the many famous examples of incidents gone wrong in open-source, and what it teaches us.

• (4/5) Golden Chronicles, Patricia Veryan

  Historical victorian romance. These 6 books took me into a thrilling world of love, humor, chivalry and swashbuckling tales of racing after hidden treasure. All books take place in eighteenth century England, backdropped by the aftermath of the Jacobite uprising by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

• (3/5) Will, Will Smith

  Unfortunately, I ran out of steam about 70% of the way for this, and might get back to it later. But overall, it’s a wonderful read about the actor/rapper who is partially a misfit for the world he grew up in - something I can relate to.

• (3.5/5) Longitude, Dava Sobel

  A historical account on the problem of accurately finding longitude at sea. Whereas it is easier to find latitude using the location of the North Star or the sun, longitude is harder as we have no reference point. The widely accepted way appeared to be using the time difference between current time and local time at the origin, but timekeeping at sea was difficult. This ultimately led to John Harrison’s decades long attempts at creating an accurate watch. Overall, the beginning half of the book was far more interesting than the latter as Sobel discusses weirdly alternate schemes people came up with for finding longitude.

• (4/5) Shalimar, Rebecca Ryman

  Historical fiction novel set in Kashmir during British India. It’s a considerably darker romance taking after pride-and-prejudice type of characters, but they are compelling. The backdrop and descriptions of Kashmir make me wish I could visit that place at a time when it wasn’t so miserably ripped apart in its war torn state. Everything in the mystery of the novel comes nicely together for a poignant ending.

• (3/5) Land of Big Numbers, Te-ping Chen

  Short fiction stories of citizen life in mainland China. Well-written but many stories suffer from abrupt endings that left me wholly unsatisfied. I’m glad I stuck through to the end, though, as the very last story (Gubeikou spirit) is the gem worth waiting for.