Andrey's Shelf

Cory Doctorow helped me to stop being afraid of AI and finally clearly tell apart things I love about it from things I hate. The future might be or not be all grim and dark, but there's a fight ahead

It felt good diving in to live as an insecure, sensitive teenager trying to find love and place in life, then dive out and be again a 35-years-old married man with 9-5 job and mortgage

Short and fun hand-illustrated essay book by The Great Brian Eno. It's a theory to answer what art is and why we need it. I intentionally read it slowly, not more than one chapter per day. Enjoyed it a lot

I never read a book where both male and female characters would be so deep.

As much as I love Zizek's speaking, I detest his writing. I really had to decypher every paragraph to get to the meaning of what he saying. When you get there, the ideas are brilliant, but the path to them is far from pleasure. It might say more about me than about him, but I quit at around a quarter anyway.

The first management book I read after I actually became a manager. It was fun learning something and immediately trying to apply it. Fun to read, little water, light writing style. I loved it

My miserable attempt to read a children book in French failed at around half. I'm not there yet. Will surely give it another try after a while

It's just bad. Not only by Dostoevsky's standards, but in general. Worth reading only where Dostoevsky started as a writer (spoiler: pretty low). Bright side: you can see here the conception of some of his later character archetypes.

This is a book that can either turn a left-leaning person into right, or save the left from moral defeat. No wonder it was banned during most of the Soviet years

Yes, I was going to therapy. Why?

Not the best Dostoevsky's novel by far, but it's rather unique. It's personal, describing his own real life events, it's written from the first person, so you can observe well only the main character's thoughts. So, if you've already read his greatest works, The Gambler is a good chance to experience Dostoevsky in a new way

I knew it would be great but, man, it was even better than I expected. I just couldn't put it away. Watch sin and virtue fighting inside a man's head and the soul being slowly destroyed as they fight. My favorite Dostoevsky's book and, maybe, my favorite book of all time

It's a shame for a 30-years old Russian, but it was my first Dostoevsky. I'll just say that it made me read five other books of his in a row. Yes, that good

Okay. Not great, but pretty nice. Sometimes you need a reminder that you don't

It's a good mental model to describe how the current stage of capitalism (or neo-feudalism, whatever) is developing. I definitely recommend it, but if I had to choose one book on the topic, I'd prefer Technofeudalism better

Best you can read on strategy. It describes modelling tools and gives you a language to describe complex systems, be it businesses, ecosystems, social groups, geopolitics, or climate. Just read it. You will have to put some effort though

Fun read on how to deceive using data (and not be deceived). Data interpretation, p-hacking, human biases, pseudo-mathematics, and all kinds of number manipulations you see everywhere

I read it on a plane and cried like a bitch.