My favorite biographer, Walter Isaacson, did it again. He created a gorgeously illustrated book about the quintessential renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. The book is based on the mind blowing — in number and content — 7200 pages of notes Leonardo left behind (which probably only accounts for one quarter, the rest is lost). As far as I am concerned this biography is the definitive introduction to this left-handed, mirror writing, ever procrastinating, sculpting, painting, stargazing, riddle creating, bird watching, theatre producing, water engineering, corpse dissecting, observing and ever curious dandy polymath.
Leonardo da Vinci – Walter Isaacson (2017) – 601 pages
“Leonardo’s notebooks are nothing less than an astonishing windfall that provides the documentary record of applied creativity.”
Walter Isaacson
I don’t want to go into too much detail about Leonardo da Vinci; just read the book! But needless to say he was one of a kind, his mind worked differently from other people and he made wide varying discoveries. I always thought he must have been a reclusive person. Because he was so far ahead of his time — sometimes centuries — that he must not have enjoyed present company. But, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Leonardo was very much a people person. And this is one of the key arguments made by Isaacson about Leonardo’s art and skill. Not only was he a keen curious (the most curious) observer and tinkerer but he also sought cooperation to bounce ideas off. Isaacson makes a strong case of Leonardo specifically becoming and being a genius because of the combination of these things.
A different print than my copy, but still gorgeous. Also, my copy has an autograph 😉
As I’ve come to expect of biographies by Isaacson, his own personal passion and admiration for the subject shine trough. Which is why I always enjoy his writing. Of course, some things that happened 500 years ago are up for debate, but Isaacson demonstrates enough knowledge and backstory to his findings to come to mostly natural conclusions. This book does an especially good job of going through da Vinci’s life chronologically but still managing to show the cross-sections and connections between art and science (and everything else) throughout Leonardo’s life. And with Leonardo everything was interconnected and related, so this is quite an accomplishment!
All of Leonardo’s skills and knowledge, of course, came together in the painting he worked on for 16 years. The Mona Lisa. The book beautifully works towards that conclusion. And by reading this book you come away with a deeper understanding and appreciation of what exactly it is you’re looking at.
On my honeymoon in 2009 I asked the store clerk at the Hemingway house on Key West: “what’s a good book to start with?”. She recommended The Sun also Rises.
The Sun also Rises – Ernest Hemingway (1926) – 222 pages
And I understand why. Because this novel is probably the most accessible summary of the typical Hemingway writing style. Very much set in the 1920s — yet timeless — it is a story about classic themes such as friendship, love, morality and searching for meaning, told through sparse dialogue and with minimal background. And where the main characters drink, a lot. A whole lot.
At the surface this book is, at most, an enjoyable adventure about a group of restless friends, who do a bit of travelling and go to see the bullfights. But when you dig a bit deeper: a lot more is going on. Which underscores the iceberg theory for which Hemingway is famous. There are many sources where you can read about what Hemingway supposedly meant. And while these can be a welcome addition to reading, I am sceptical about too much analysis. Sometimes maybe it just is what it is. Either way, one of the features of great art is that there is no definitive meaning and it is what it is to you.
I read a book about flawed and memorable characters fleeing and navigating through the complexities of life and love. And they drank. A lot.
I picked up this book in the bargain bin of a HMV in Manchester in 2006, when I was on a — sort of — pilgrimage. But I left it on my bookshelf for 12 years, thinking I probably knew most of it already. But books are meant to be read, so I had to get to it eventually.
Joy Division and the making of Unknown Pleasures – Jake Kennedy (2006) – 214 pages
I think I understand why this book was already in the bargain bin the same year it was released. Not that it is a terrible book, but it is just a really hard sell. In depth reviews of every Warsaw/Joy Division song, demo or recording session are something only hard hardcore fans have a thirst for. But if you do, you will find a chronological and remarkable tale of four guys who went from sloppy generic punk music to producing a timeless, unique and legendary album within two short years. With each page turn, they improve and get closer to reaching that point. Which was a natural conclusion of everything prior, and didn’t drop out of the sky. But even so, the progression and quality of a debut album is still unmatched (maybe only by that other band).
The book falls somewhere between a biography and an encyclopedia. In other words, just my cup of tea! I certainly picked up a few new things. Mick Middles gets quoted often, he is another authority on Joy Division because of his book. I also own this book, and I definitely need to read it now!
I literally received this book from the hands of Jimmy Carter himself at a book signing in New York. I never met a president before — even if only for a few seconds — so I was keen to read his book!
My copy, signed by Jimmy Carter himself.
Carter always struck me as an interesting person. A multifaceted outlier: deeply religious but pro science and evolution, anti-NRA but pro guns, peanut farmer by trade and a nuclear submarine operator by education. But apart from all that, any 93 year old who has been married for over 70 years, probably has some interesting experiences to share.
Faith – Jimmy Carter (2018) – 174 pages
But this is not a biography. This is a personal creed about his definition of faith in Jesus Christ, interwoven with experiences about engaging with world leaders or dealing with personal or global crises of the past. In the last chapter, Carter, without naming names, demonstrates awareness by exactly pinpointing current problems. And you learn that his general approach to past and current problems are often the same, which I think come down to one powerful word: inclusion.
At first I was confused who this book was for. I expected it to be for either Christians or deliberately for non-religious people. But none of that. Carter just writes from his own personal experiences and deeply held beliefs, for anyone who wants to listen and learn something. And he does so with authenticity, honesty and integrity.
Bonus!
I was also lucky enough to be at the taping of this interview on the same day as the book signing. He was a surprise extra guest. The interview offers a great recap of what to expect of the book.
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf (1927) – 254 pages
This was an exhausting book to read. Because it reads like a prolonged poem with a stream of thoughts about everything and anything and with very little dialogue. Two things are very clear though: Woolf went very deep and therefore this book can not be anything else than autobiographical. Feeling already exhausted as a reader, I couldn’t even imagine what the process must have been for a writer to put this on paper.
It’s not my favorite kind of fiction but I am still glad I read it. It’s remarkable how Woolf is able to capture moments of human thought and emotion in an identifiable way: tempestuous and full of unfulfilled intent. And where love and hate are often not as indistinguishable as we think.
In 2018 I read 24 books (25th in progress). Here is a list of 10 books that stood out in one way or another. Some are recommendations.
Besides music biographies, computer history and management/business books, I tend to read bestseller novels from a few years ago. By then the crowd has decided what’s good and thrift stores will carry a lot of these books — which can be an indication of something worth reading.
Yes, I read on paper. Screen reading is a different experience for me.
The first couple of books on the list are fiction, the rest are non-fiction. Otherwise the list is in no particular order. Spoilers ahead.
The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead
This Pulitzer price winning book will get under your skin. Everything you read about it is true. It is disturbing and unsettling in every way. It is a book about slavery, and the structural dehumanization and killing of millions of Africans over hundreds of years. And it will shed light on the completely hopeless situation of entire generations of humans. But it is also about redemption and the human spirit (and sadly not just the good parts).
The after-the-fact writing style Whitehead uses is very effective. For instance he will write a build up to a rape scene, so you know it’s coming, and there’s nothing you can do. But when it does, the first sentence is of what happened after (“the women of the camp stitched her up”). So without actually describing the event he will make your heart sink. He uses this technique quite a few times, to great effect. I could write a lot more about this book, but just know that this book will not leave you and it will change how you look at things.
The book blends realism with allegory. So even though it is a fictional story (there was of course no literal underground railroad), large parts are based on extensive research of real events. Therefore this book greatly upset my understanding of the history of the USA and slavery.
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner is another book that will get under your skin. It is a universal story of the friendship of two boys. About their relationship and the unselfishness and sacrifice. What makes this story extra remarkable is how the writer interweaves the setting (the nature, the culture, the city) with the story. He makes them work really well together. In doing so he not only underscores the idea that people, and therefore their choices, are a product of their environment. But also, this writing style will make you feel as if you are running your kite with the two boys through the crowded and narrow streets, leaving a dust trail while the hot sun is beating on you. A small part of the book near the end I thought was a bit far-fetched, but that might just be me. All in all it’s one of the best books I read this year.
I’ll Steal You Away – Niccolò Ammaniti
This book is in a lot of Dutch thrift stores. And for good reason, because the writing talent of Ammaniti is evident. Of all books, this book made me laugh out loud the most (I mean, the donkey on a catapult). Ammaniti tells imaginative and captivating but still recognizable stories, that are great fun to read. Even though he adds some unnecessary coarse details in my opinion. For good measure, I also read ‘I Am Not Afraid’ by Ammaniti to see if it was a one-off. But it is not. You can probably pick up any Ammaniti book and enjoy yourself. Overall I would say his writing style feels like a snack instead of a wholesome meal. But sometimes that’s what you want.
The Dinner – Herman Koch
And when you crave a snack, I can also recommend the Dinner. Many thrift stores’ bookshelves bend by the weight of the amount of copies of this book. It was one of the most sold books ever in the Netherlands. And I enjoyed reading it. It is written in such a way that you can tell the writer really carefully crafted sentences and chapters to keep the flow going. But after finishing I do remember some of the characters, but I struggle to remember the main plot reveal. But that is because the plot is secondary, this book is all about dialogue and human interaction which are both masterfully written down.
Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words – Johnny Cash
This bio is from 1975, when Johnny Cash already had quite the life and a biography was well in order. We now know he would also have another life, artistically, in the nineties. So reading this book from a 1975 perspective was great. Cash, of course, seems like a man of few words. But the words are heartfelt and honest, and they shine through the paper. You can sometimes just hear the sentences in his voice. Reading this book left me with a deeper understanding of the man and his thoughts and his faith.
But as with most (music) autobiographies I’ve read, this one also falls into the trap of spending a disproportional amount of pages on more recent, less relevant events. Neil Young’s bio for instance talks way too much about his digital music player. And Cash dedicates a lot of time to the charities he runs. That’s probably fine when you read it in 1975 but 43 years later, that’s not what people remember him for and readers will have little connection to something that was topical then.
The Soul of a New Machine – Tracy Kidder
I’ve written a blog specifically on this book. I can think of no other book that blends two of my favorite subjects, management and computer history, in such an exciting manner that you would think it is fiction, when in fact it is not.
The Phoenix project – Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr
And that can also be said about this book. In a different way, it is fiction, but it is also not. Read my blog post about it here.
How Google Works – Eric Schmidt
I would say this book was written when Google was at its peak (2014). So I couldn’t help but compare what I read to what we know now. And that is not always a positive story. Therefore this book sometimes struck me as being a bit too much self-congratulatory and trying to be funny when clearly they are not telling the whole story. So it deliberately withholds information, which of course makes sense for a billion dollar company, but you can feel tricked as a reader. They only tell you what they want to tell you. And if you’re fine with that there are still quite a few really good lessons in here so I would certainly recommend it. Also, I am still rooting for Google to not be evil.
Zero to One – Peter Thiel
I reread this book this year, because I think it holds good reminders of how some things really work. Thiel himself has become kind of a controversial figure, but this book has ideas and asks questions that help you make see things clearer. So rereading it once in a while is recommended.
The Innovators – Walter Isaacson
I reread 4 books in 2018, including Zero to One, the Rider, the Old Man and the Sea. These three I’ve read multiple times already, but this was my second read through of the Innovators. It is the near complete story of the age of computers. It’s my favorite kind of subject by my favorite biographer. I love it.
This year I had a chance to meet, and have my copy of the Innovators signed by, Walter Isaacson himself, which was a lot of fun. I also picked up of his latest book on Leonardo da Vinci, which I plan on reading of course.
About reading
When you consider that tens of thousands of new books are published each year, reading around 25 books per year is not a lot. The books combine for a total of 6,123 pages, so averaging around 250 pages per book. But more importantly this comes down to reading around 16 pages per day. Now that does not sound like a lot does it? So maybe there is still room for improvement.
These are all the 2018 books I read (expect two, which I borrowed) in chronological order of reading. The top book, from Donald Knuth, I read on a loop (chapter per week), so I am actually always reading this book.
Art Garfunkel has a log of every book he ever read. Over 50 years of reading and still he ‘only’ read around 1300 books. Which is impressive, but of course still very little compared to the millions of books available. So when you can only read so many books, you have to be picky. But I am always looking for tips!
I am looking forward to reading ‘How the Internet Happened’ and see how it compares to or complements the Innovators. And a lot of people seem to recommend Bad Blood because it would reveal a lot about Silicon Valley culture. Both books came out recently.
Paper always beats rock and scissors. Because one of the few inventions greater than writing itself, is writing on paper. Paper writings are absolute, self-contained and transferable units of knowledge, which after publishing become and stay available and accessible for hundreds of years or more.
Take da Vinci’s work. We are able to witness and experience and read the exact paper he put his thoughts on some 500 years ago. Our language may have changed but the medium and therefore message survived. You can pick it up, look at it, and see exactly what he saw (if you can afford it).
And in the same vein, I can easily pick up a book, written and printed 100 years ago, and read it. Or nearer by, I can open any textbook I used in college from my bookshelf and read it. And my class notes just sit in a box, unchanged, ready to be read. All I need are my eyeballs. But my 3.5 inch floppies from that era, I can no longer access those (with ease). And the CD-ROMs, I wonder if they would even work. And when the medium becomes inaccessible the message is lost.
Part of my bookshelf
The internet
So as I am typing this on an electronic digital device, that translates key presses into binary numbers which are stored on a solid state disk on another computer somewhere else, which is connected with my device through countless other specialised electronic devices and protocols, I can’t help but wonder about what will be left in 100 years — or more — from what is written everyday on the internet.
The internet is right up there with the written word as one of our greatest inventions, but it is much more fragile and dependant on many layers (i.e. electricity, storage, network, specialised devices, formats) that all interact with one another.
We have accumulated large parts of human knowledge in millions of paper books over the past millennium, but most written text nowadays is digital. And digital formats and transfer methods change. Fast and often. So I wonder how we can best preserve our written thoughts for the next millennium: self-contained and transferable. But I can’t come up with anything better than paper?
When a co-worker handed me a copy of The Phoenix Project, the 8-bit art on the cover looked fun. But the tagline — ‘A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping your Business Win’ — sounded a bit like the usual buzzword management lingo. But I was clearly wrong, I loved this book!
It is unlike anything I’ve read before and it really spoke to me because the situations were so incredibly recognizable. The book tells a fictionalized story where the main character, Bill, gets promoted — more or less against his will — to VP IT Operations and subsequently inherits a bit of a mess. Things keeps breaking and escalating, causing SEV-1 outages all while the billion dollar company is having a bad couple of quarters and put all their hope on Project Phoenix. An IT project that is supposed to solve anything and everything; already three years in the making and nowhere close to be finished.
The story revolves around Bill and his struggle of how to turn things around. On his path to discovery he is mentored by an eccentric figure called Eric (who is such a great and funny character).
I feel like Bill and I have a lot in common, mainly because the book is really spot on when describing situations IT departments can find themselves in. Some scenes were a literal copy of things I have experienced. As if the writers were there and took notes. It made me laugh out loud or raise my eyebrows on more than one occasion. The reliance on certain key-figures, the disruption of self-involved Marketing/Sales people, the office politics, the lack of trust in teams, the weight of technical debt, the difference between requirements and customer needs. It was all too familiar. So for me the power of the book is the true-to-life examples, because those provide the basis for arguing the successful application of the theory.
Because the book is in fact the theory of DevOps compiled into an exciting story. Which is a lot more fun than it sounds.
Actually the book could be seen as a modern day version of The Goal by Dr. Goldratt — a book that handles the Theory of Constraints — which I had of course heard of, but never read. The writers of The Phoenix Project make no secret of their admiration for Goldratts’ theory. But DevOps is of course a thing of its own. A relatively new paradigm, borrowing from TOC, Lean and Agile principles among other things. Its goal is ‘to aim at shorter development cycles, increased deployment frequency, and more dependable releases, in close alignment with business objectives’. And where The Three Ways theory is a central aspect, unifying culture with production flow. The book shows how those theoretic mechanics work in practice. And that IT is closer to manufacturing than you might think; by breaking down the four different types of work there are in IT. That was actually an eye-opener for me. But I won’t go into too much detail about DevOps, I just wanted to point you in the right direction. If you work with different people to create anything in IT, you are probably going to like this book, and are bound to learn something.
This book had been sitting on my to-readlist for way too long! But I finally found a second hand copy, so here we go!
You could say this is the official autobiography of Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. The Operating System that changed the world! You can wake me up in the middle of the night to talk about operating systems. So this book is right up my alley.
It’s funny to think that more time has passed since this book came out (16 years), than the time there was between the birth of Linux and the release of the book (10 years). So an update would be welcome, however history = history and this book does a good job of documenting the rise of Linux. Even in 2001 it was clear that Linux was a huge force to be reckoned with and that it would only grow bigger from there. But I think few would suspect Linux would be the most used operating system in the world (largely) because of smartphones i.e. Android. Because people were still talking about the desktop in 2001.
Celeb life.
The book is structured around alternating chapters written by Linus himself and the writer David Diamond. It follows a chronological timeline. From young Linus to Linux, to underground celebrity status, to bonafide celebrity, to riches and world domination. The story is told in either conversation form between David and Linus or just plain old retelling facts. Because in 2001 things were relatively ‘fresh’ the book has some nice intricate details. Details that would probably be lost when you write a book about this subject 20 years from now. And that is probably what I liked most about it. I was familiar with most of the history, but this book does a great job of filling in the details to get a complete picture from a first degree account. Also there is quit a bit of room towards the end where Linus shares his thoughts on Intellectual Property, copyright and becoming rich (not Bill Gates rich, but still rich). Which was really interesting!
Here are some take-aways from the book:
Linus is of course a programming genius. He wrote Linus when he was around 21. I would guess only a handful of people in the world were able to do what he did. And he did it at a young age. (He probably wouldn’t like this comparison: but it reminded me a lot of Bill Gates who wrote a BASIC interpreter when he was even younger.)
But the genius also manifests itself in the ability to make good design calls (very early on). I would even go so far as to state that his programming ability is surpassed by his talent to make the right choice (design, technical etc.)
He has proven this again, by unleashing git(the software versioning tool)to the world in 2005. Which made quite an impact on software development in general (e.g. it gave rise to Github) So not only did he start one of the first software revolutions, he also started the second! With git he doubled down on demonstrating the knack for making the right choices.
He comes from a journalist family who were straight-up communist sympathizers and part of a Finnish minority that speaks Swedish. They also dragged young Linus to Moscow on occasion. And his grandfather was bit of a famous poet in Finland.
With this communist background in mind it is funny to think he is very much a pragmatist and not an idealist. But maybe exactly because of this. It’s a very conscious decision and he seems to have thought about it a lot and it permeates everything he does.
There is a lot of self-deprecating humor in this book.
Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman
There are quite a few sexual references. Linus starts the book with stating his view on the meaning of life: using sex as example.
The Tanenbaum discussion was about technical choices. The success of Linux sort of gave Linus the upper hand in the discussion. I think this irked Tanenbaum but I also suspect Tanenbaum felt that if he had just released his OS Minix to the world in the same manner Linus had, we probably wouldn’t have had Linux.
Stallman gave a talk at Linus’ university about GNU and this led to Linus choosing GPL as the license. And of course gcc was the programming language Linux was written in (developed by Stallman).
And this is key, Linus acknowledges this, his project came at the exact right time. A year later and someone else would have probably already done it. Or we would be all be using *BSD (who were still fighting other battles). A year early and no-one would have batted an eye, because too few people online were around to notice.
So the timing consist of 3 factors coming together: hence the word timing. The GNU license(invented by Stallman), the availability of cheap 386 processors and the internet. Take away either one and things would be different.
Most of all I think that the internet was key, because Linus found his co-creators there and feedback. But also because Linux became the de facto operating system for internet servers and was born around the same time the www was born. This is no coincidence. The internet en Linux grew up together.
Also one last point that proves he has good gut feeling, in 2001 he predicted the ubiquity of the smartphone:
The title of the book is ‘Just for Fun’. And it is written with room for jokes and lighthearted thoughts. But there is also plenty of serious thought on ideals and pragmatism. But fun is the general theme throughout Linus’ life and the development of Linux. The fun that you get from following your curiosity, working hard on making it happen, and caring about what you do. The pragmatic approach of Linus to everything he does seems to create a sense of flow and he follows that flow and has fun with it. This is also backed by how an enormous project like the Linux kernel, which is the biggest software project in the world, is managed. The loose structure that dictates the development comes from flow.
So all in all it’s a very fun book to read! Even if it’s from 2001 and a lot has happened since. I think there could be an updated version. Or you could ask yourself: “who, in 2017, is the equivalent of 1991 Torvalds?”. So, whose biography will we be reading in 10 years time? My money is onVitalik Buterin(literally, I own Ethereum). He is a current day one-of-a-kind genius whose technology will probably change the world. Get it?
