Recently I started reading again because I realized I had the attention span of a goldfish...which was quite shocking because during high school and early uni days I would read entire books in one day, and now I couldn't concentrate in reading few chapters.
I need to get my brain back lol.
So I set up some rules for reading:
- PLZ FINISH THE BOOK YOU STARTED if you think it is interesting. If you think it's not interesting then just ditch it (life's too short).
- Have a maximum of 3 books you are reading at the same time.
- One should be a technical book within CS.
- Read to get something out of it (a new message, idea, understanding) and make a tangible output out of it, which can include:
- short blog post/writing (this is kind of a must to remember what I read)
- a small project (if technical)
I might make posts like this on a regular basis if I have time.
So here's a random list of what I've been reading:
Books
Some books:
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Why Fish Don't Exist, Lulu Miller
- A book about the author's obsession with David Starr Jordan & chaos.
- I've actually picked this book up few years ago, read about 30%, and just discontinued it only because I kinda forgot;
It was only recently that I've looking in my kindle library and I've discovered the book again.
- So far I've only read about 20% (so still before than where I left off), and honestly I don't know what to think about this book so far. It's a bit odd & unlike other books I've read, but not in a bad way. It's interesting enough to keep my attention.
- UPDATE: Finished the book at 11/9/25 (MAJOR SPOILERS)
- So.. I don't know if it was because of the hype of the book with everyone saying that its life-changing, but when I finally got to the twist & conclusion, it was just.. good. OK. It was felt disappointing due to high expectations IMO.
- The good:
- I ultimately liked the message though. Classification and taxonomy, under the name of science, can be destructive, and that ultimately maybe humans can't grasp the complexity of nature. It was the first time learning "fish do not exist" personally, and the analogy about the animals living in the mountains grouped as one group just striked a chord for me. I loved the portions about the history & politics surrounding eugenics and the couter arguments; It was interesting that the very believers of eugenics are believers of Darwin, but failed to see the simple message that the complexity of genes is the path to survival, not homogenity.
- The whole theme on structure & "higher order" vs chaos can be seen in so many areas.
- Something that surprised me was how human scientists kept referring to various animal traits that were clearly superior or smart to something inferior, such as how having crows having insanely good memory as "good instinct", friends between primates as "favorite affiliation partners", etc. Humans tend to use linguistics to put ourselves on top of the nature ladder.
- This also ties ideas like sexuality, race, how we tend to judge quickly how some people with certain tendencies are "lower" than us, and this also ties back to the author's identity as a bisexual who lived her life believing that she needed a man.
- I loved the part about David Starr Jordan, starting off with the achievement & grit he had life, but slowly uncovering the dark truths behind his ideologies and movements throughout the book. I was just 100% horrid about his beliefs and his huge influence on eugenics in the US. The part about Jane's mysterious death and his involvement was very interesting too, kind of read like a mystery novel, although if David was actually involved that would have been extremely evil.
- The structure of the book was so weird, but in an interesting way? I've never read a book like this with a mixture of science esssays, biography, personal memoir, etc. I think it also conforms the core idea of not following convention or structure somehow.
- The bad:
- The build up would have been very unimpactful for people who already knew that "fish does not exist" or those who already knew David Starr Jordan was a white supremist / racist / eugenicist lol. Also the readers could have been easily spoiled because, I mean, you can literally just go to the Wikipedia page and already see how he's an ardent believer of eugenics by reading the first 3 sentences.
- Personally, the message was good, I liked it (as stated above), but it wasn't mind-altering or life- changing. I was more like, OK cool, but is this it? It feels overhyped. Maybe this is because I'm not the right audience; it feels like it's for people who are still very much struggling in searching for meaning in life. Ofc I'm not saying that I don't have my own struggles, but I don't delve into those topics as much I guess.
- Unfortunately, I felt like if the author's personal life was sometimes.. too much? It felt I was invading her privacy lol. I was also a bit freaked out reading the part about her cheating & her clinging on to the "curly haired man" in so many portions of the book.. Though, I still am happy for her that she found the right life and parter & she is happy in the end.
- TLDR; I give about 3.5/5.
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- A book about building a computer from scratch, starting from binary codes.
- My friend recommended me this book, and I think this will actually help me understand the hardware aspect of the computer. I read until chapter 4? so far and it has been quite good, although some parts were slow as it explains some basic physics/chem knowledge that I had forgotten long ago.
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- A guide to Obsidian written by a korean author (IDK if I should categorize it under books). I've skimmed very quickly through about 50% of the whole thing because I already knew most things, but the bits that I didn't know helped me fill the gaps.
- The guide has a section on customizing your obsidian vault with CSS, and I've wanted to do that for a while (but as always, I procrastinated..) so this guide will helpfully force me to actually do what I want.
Articles
Recently I've had some time to dive into internet's rabbit holes and go through articles. I've found some interesting readings that I'd like to take note of.
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- Recently I've noticed myself reading more than watching when it comes to learning use things. A kind of related example: Few years ago I would have jumped straight into a youtube video tutorial, but now I would just go to the docs and usually read the quickstart or intro section, and I've found that to be more helpful.
- Generally, due to this I think reading is a better way to absorb information at your own pace, although as a uni student I agree I don't have too much time. But still, while I've had time to self-learn and reflect, I've found that slow reading is the best for me.
- So now and onwards, I'm going to try to commit to slow & deep learning (ofc if my circumstances allow me to)
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- This blog post helped me motivate myself and made me rethink why and how I should read, with lots of reasons why you should stimulate yourself intellectually through reading.
- I really liked this article, and I'll probably re-read it sometime again.
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Choose Boring Technology, Dan McKinley
- This article was pretty interesting - It persuades readers to embrace the boring tech. Boring doesn't equate too bad, rather there are many boring AND good (enough) tech out there. The good thing about the "boring" technology is that it's much well understood by the community, so their failures are also understood. When choosing technology, a shiny new technology usually has MUCH more unknown unknowns..
- From the article:
- A known unknown is something like: we don’t know what happens when this database hits 100% CPU.
- An unknown unknown is something like: geez it didn’t even occur to us that writing stats would cause GC pauses.
- It also states that when considering a new technology, first try to solve the problem with current tools & figure out a clear justification why you need a new stack.
I'm probably gonna update this list until November is over.