20/2+3 Books in 2023

Table of contents

• I bought an E-Reader!
• Fiction
• Non-Fiction

The Rise of endymion

by Dan Simmons

This is the finale of the 4 book series called «The Hyperion Cantos». There is not too much to be said about this book, I found it to be okay-ish. Aenea, the main character is still a bit annoying. Most of the open questions and mysteries get resolved and the ending is quite satisfying.

After all, I would probably not recommend to read «Endymion» and «The Rise of Endymion», and just stick to the two first books of the series, which were really great!

Recommended? Only to wrap up the series if you already read «Endymion»

Project hail mary

by Andy Weir

This is a short, light and fun Sci-Fi story with some interesting concepts. I would say this is a great book for anyone, even people that normally are not so much into Sci-Fi, as the story is more about the characters, mystery and conflict solving (can’t say too much without spoilers), even tough it’s a “Space Story”. Andy Weir also wrote «The Martian», so if you liked that story, you should definitely read this book!

The ending is good but maybe a bit too cheesy for me. Still a great book which was rightfully well received internationally.

Recommended? Yes! Short and fun book, do it!

Ilium

by Dan Simmons

Greek Mythology, Dinosaurs, Robots, Shakespeare, Post-Apocalypse, Quantum Physics, Philosophy, Fantasy.

No, the list above was not spit out by a random generator, it’s the plot of this crazy crazy book! The book starts off with the classic story of the Greek-Trojan war and how the Olympic Gods play their devious games with the humans that worship them. Then completely different tales come into play and the first 100-200 pages I was just thinking: “WTF? Nice individual stories but what’s the point, how does it fit together”. It was really kind of a slog to get through this confusing slow start and I did not really enjoy the non-mythology parts at first.

BUT: it’s still a pretty cool book and it starts to make sense (more or less) at some point and actually made me want to read the second book and how these seemingly random stories end up and how they affect eachother.

Recommended? If you are running out of books to read or if you are simply crazy and like crazy books.
I would rather suggest you read Dan Simmon’s more popular series «Hyperion», which I’ve read in 2022/2023.

Olympos

by Dan Simmons

Olympos is the sequel to the above-mentioned «Ilium», and it was alright. It gives you more information about the mysteries that came up in the first novel, but sadly, it does not really explain or solve all the questions that were brought up and this left me a bit unsatisfied. Some of the different stories/characters also drift in some weird directions that I did not enjoy.

Even tough it was a cool story that I kinda liked, I still felt a bit relieved to have finished this duology.

Recommended? Only if you have read «Ilium» and really want to know how the story ends.

The Paradox of choice

by Barry Schwartz

This book is about decisions and how the abundance of options in these globalized times seem to give you more freedom of choice. The author claims that too many and too complex choices are detrimental to our well-being and can lead to dissatisfaction and regret.

Generally, while this is an interesting topic, the book is a bit dry and drags on for too long. Of course the many examples that the author uses are helpful to burn the ideas and concepts into the reader’s brain, but it could have been shorter. I try to describe some of the points discussed in this book (non-exhaustive list):

• Too many options
  • Having little choice is better than having no choice at all. You would think that having the option to choose between hundreds of products of the same type gives you even more freedom compared to just choosing from a few. While this is true, since you obviously are “more free” to choose a different product, on the other hand it can lead to problems because there are just too many parameters to compare between these products and a seeminlgy simple decision can just take forever, because you are unsure and need to think and compare about all the available options.
• Analysis Paralysis and Regret
  • Maybe you want to buy some new headphones and go to a store and they have 50 different headphones. People that the author calls “maximizers” will go through all the headphones, and compare their prices, sound quality, looks, special features, reviews, etc. This will stop you from taking a quick and easy decision because it’s too much for our brain to handle since there is no straightforward optimal product. Another problem can be that you second-guess yourself and regret your purchase because you “missed out” on all the other products. You start to imagine if you maybe would have liked the other headphones better, if there would have been a better deal or if this other color would have looked cooler.
    The author shows studies where the result was that people were generally more satisfied about their purchase if there were only a few choices. For example if there are only 5 different headphones available you can quickly compare and filter them, the choice becomes more obvious and afterwards you don’t have as many “what-ifs” that would lead to “Fear of missing out” (FOMO).
    Another important parameter is non-reversability of a purchase. If you can “undo” a decision (returning the product for example) you will also start to second-guess your purchase more and think more about potential problems as opposed to having an irreversible decision that you just have to accept and then move on with your life.
• Good Marketing gives you less Options
  • This “Paradox of Choice” matters for marketing people, because they want to make a sale as fast as possible and prevent potential customers from freezing into Analysis Paralysis and regretting their purchase and in the worst case, write a bad review. In sales they sometimes “help” you choose by not offering a lot of options and making the best choice pretty obvious. For example when you choose a phone plan, most of the time in Switzerland there are only 3 plans available. The first is the budget plan which for most people is not really usable because there is not enough GBs/SMS/calls offered. The second plan is well-balanced, covers all your needs and is just slightly more expensive than you would like (this way they can also control prices and make the “obvious choice” a bit more expensive). The third option would be the over the top, luxurious, unlimited special options around the world plan than almost no one with a normal life would ever need. With these three options, the choice is obvious, fast and easy for the majority of the people and you will never get stuck in choosing one of these phone plans (of course chooing between different providers is another problem…).
• Solutions/Tips
  • Become a satisficer not a maximizer
    • The author calls the people that have to deal with the problems that arise from having too many choices “Maximizers”, as they tend to want to get the maximum out of every purchase they make. By being aware of these problems, he advices you to try to become more of a “Satisficer”, which is satisfied with a purchase that is “just good enough”. He claims that “Satisficers” are happier by lowering the expectations about their decisions and by not comparing themselves to others as much (no need to be/have the best all the time).
  • Choose when to choose
    • Seems obvious, but be aware that not all decisions are equally important and impactful. When you want to buy a house with all your livesavings, of course you do your due diligence and thorougly compare as many options as possible. But when you just want to buy something simple like a new coffe-machine you do not need to stress out about it and spend one week researching all the possible special features of coffee makers (assuming you just want some coffee and are not a world class barista of course ;)).

Recommended? No. It’s a good book which made me notice things in everyday life, but just read a summary. No need to read the whole book to get the points stated.

The sociology book

My sixth book from the «Big Ideas Simply Explained» series. I read one of these books every year to get a broad overview about a topic that interests me. It’s written very understandable, has nice illustrations and pictures and sums up a topic pretty good.

For me, the Sociology Book was one of the weaker books in this series, but that’s my personal opinion and in general the book is as well made as the others.
While I remember that there were some interesting concepts, I did not really remember anything specific. Consciously, nothing really stuck with me.
I would probably have to skim through the topics and re-read the ones that interest me to get anything out of this book.

Recommended? Probably not, except if you want to have a very wide and general overview over Sociology concepts.

Immune

by Philipp Dettmer

As the title suggests, this book is about the human immune system; what it is, what it does and how it works (or sometimes fails). It is described as a “fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.”.

The author Philipp Dettmer is the founder of the very popular science YouTube channel «kurzgesagt», which tries to explain various difficult science concepts as easily as possible (and as complex as necessary). In this book he uses his YouTube-skills to explain the insanely complex topic of how our body internally fights for our survival 24/7. The book is well structured and starts with the basics as it slowly gets more complex and builds on the previous explanations. While this book is made to be understandable for laymen, the author points out that some of the explanations are very dumbed down (still not easy to understand) and would require years and years of studying to understand completely.

The book is well-written, fun, reasonably easy to understand and cutely illustrated in the typical “kurzgesagt”-style. If you want to learn about your body, biology, bacteria, viruses, illnesses and how (not) to boost your immune system, you should give this book a try.

Recommended? Yes

Bullshit Jobs

by David Graeber

Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world?
Would anyone notice if your job would be gone tomorrow?
Is the world be a better place because your job exists?

If you answer one or more of these questions with “No”, then you probably have a “Bullshit Job”.

About 40% of the people that read David Graeber’s short online article on this topic would say that they spend 8 hours a day on a shitty, useless job that does not help their community in any way (or sometimes even hurts them). The author claims that putting a human in such a job that is found to be dumb and worthless borders on torture.

This book is about:

• The concept of a bullshit job, which is subjective and the author does not point fingers and tells you which jobs are bullshit (with some exceptions). Also: bullshit-job != shit-job.
• How the “hyper efficient capitalism” fails by creating time- and energy-wasting jobs
• Corporate bullshit: what stupid office politics are and why they occur
• Why the existence of bullshit jobs inflicts “profound moral and spiritual damage on society”
• How most of “productive jobs” have been automated away and have not led to more free time but to the creation of more manager/admin/service jobs which (mostly) would not be needed
• Lots of stories from readers about their jobs which are funny/sad/unbelievable/facepalm-inducing/relatable
• Different categories of bullshit jobs and why the more useful and fulfilling jobs are often underpaid
• Moral and political answers to why Bullshit Jobs exist
• Thinking critically about the work we do and why/how we do it

Recommended? Yes, especially if you feel a tiny bit that you spend your time on a “Bullshit Job”. At least read the (more provocatively written) original article.