The Top Four Books I'm Dying to Read in Early 2018

Reading is one of my favorite hobbies and it’s great to do, but I have been slacking.

The act of reading is delicate… when the conditions are right, I can read voraciously. I’ll take down half of a book on a single bus ride, or crush several large tomes during a weeklong family vacation.

On the other hand, when I’m hustling through my day-to-day grind and putting in hours to work on music, writing, and Steem.. it’s easy to lose time for reading.

I mean, I spend most of my time reading in terms of blog posts and social media - but it’s less time for reading longform books. There is still value in a real book. Somebody has to organize their thoughts and do a lot of research to put together a book, whereas I can poop out some of these blog posts without it being a big deal (lol).

Here’s what I look forward to taking down in the coming months:

(1) Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This book is so popular that it singlehandedly launched the word “antifragile” into popular usage. Also Nassim has an intense cult of popularity within the tech world, including the crypto space.

I listened to most of the audiobook for Fooled By Randomness and found it educational, though a bit long-winded. I actually skipped the last third of the book because I felt like I got the point. We’ll see if Antifragile might be a bit more entertaining - at the very least, I know I will learn something new.

(2) On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

With a runtime of 1h 40m for the audiobook, this is more of an exquisite podcast / blog post than a full book. However ever since I heard Timothy on the Sam Harris podcast I’ve had this on my to-read list.

On one hand, a book about the symptoms of political tyranny feels a little unnecessary for me. I’m a young freelance writer and musician, I don’t really wield a lot of power in any political systems.

However - I do realize that Steem is its own political ecosystem, and perhaps the lessons learned from this book will give me a better perspective for approaching our own big questions: How to use flags correctly, the value of votebots, which witnesses to support, etc. Learning about what the symptoms of tyranny are could be useful for becoming a better steem citizen.

(3) The Four Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss

This book has been on the back of my mind for a while. I’m a fan of Tim and I like to cook, so, why not? The meat of the book is a series of about a dozen recipes that, as a collection, teach you all of the major cooking techniques you need to know to be good across many cuisines.

It sounds like a lot of fun. The main reason I haven’t gone through this book yet has been money - I’ve been eating rice and beans lol. However with cryptocurrency doing pretty well lately, I think I might be able to put aside a few hundred bucks and experiment with some next-level cookery.

(4)The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

It still hurts that DFW is gone… Infinite Jest is my favorite novel ever and I know that I have to go ahead and read The Pale King at some point. I know it’ll be beautiful and life-affirming and some of the best writing I’ve ever read…

…but I also know it is an unfinished story. I know there will be no resolution, not even by postmodern standards, just a bunch of great vignettes and chapters that hint at the real book we’ll never read…

But aside from all the malaise, I really do need to read this one. It’s about tax collectors apparently, so I should read it while I’m calculating all my capital gains tax from 2017 lol. Before that I should finish “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men”, which I’m like 60% through right now.

What is On Your Reading List?

Let’s hear it. If you have any great books in mind, I might add them to my own list :-)