Fun in My Life

1. Buckeye Rebirth: Urban Meyser, an Inspired Team and a New Era at Ohio State -Bill Rabinowitz 85%

I love following various sports for a number of reasons. One of them is sports basically are a model of life. Both of them are about growth, collaboration, competition, control and influence. How some mediocre players can become super stars and how some supers stars become mediocre and even despised. It’s all happening in real life too. This is a book about Urban Meyser, an outstanding coach of Ohio State college football. I love him because after following his stories and watching him talk and behave, I kinda felt like that someone actually seriously know how to be outstanding, which for most people is a totally random process. This is book about him. I like it.

2. Quiet: The power of Introverts in a world that can’t Stop Talking -Susan Cain 85%

It’s a book explaining how some became introverts physiologically and why introverts should be valued as much as extroverts. To be honest, even though I am able to appear as extrovert as anyone, I am an introvert. I like this book. It helped me to understand myself more.

3. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future -Peter Thiel 95%

This is a must read by Paypal’s cofounder and series investor with great insights about how to evaluate business ideas, gauge their potentials and design the corresponding business strategies.

4. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses -Eric Ries 80%

I like the point which the book was trying to make about starting up: make a basic demo of the product and improve products adaptively to fit the customers’ needs. Obviously it is not the only ideology to succeed compared to what Steve Jobs believe (People don’t really know what they want, until you put the products in front of them; It’s not the customers’ job to know what they want.) But it’s another way to look at things and agrees with what Facebook believes (Finish is better than perfect.)

5. How to Win Friends & Influence People -Dale Carnegie 85%

It’s probably the first self-help book ever written over 60 years ago with millions of copies sold. The author and the book are without question legendary with most of the points made still insightful about how to make others like you.

6. Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader -Brent Schlender 90%

This book is a Steve Jobs’ biography written by an unauthorized author compared to Walter Isaacson. However this book makes me feel like this unauthorized author may deserve more to write about Steve Jobs because of the closeness between him and Jobs. Many more details than the one written by Walter Isaacson. I like it.

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Here is the list of English written books I have read since 2011.

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