Books Read June - Dec 2024

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The Left Hand of Darkness - After years of owning this and one failed past attempt, I finished this classic. I should have done so earlier.

Rework - Excellent exposition from the founders of 37 Signals on how to be lean and succeed in a boostrapped startup.

Epilogue of Mahabharata - A collection of academic essays on how the Mahabharata came to us in its current form which challenges many of the ideas that we have taken for granted.

The Stranger - My first taste of Camus. I've a few more lined up this year.

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup -  2024 saw me reading quite a few books on starting up a software company because I launched my own.

The SaaS Playbook: Build a Multimillion-Dollar Startup Without Venture Capital - similar to the previous one.

Stradivari's Genius One Cello, Five Violins, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection - Engaging story of 6 Stradivari instruments across the centuries. 

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness - Overrated. There are gems here and there - and Naval Ravikant's content and interviews on the internet are worth reading and mulling over, but this book could have been a pamphlet.

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - I remember reading an abridged version of this years ago, and I had loved that edition. This one is, sadly, unreadable.

The Sleep Book: How to Sleep Well Every Night - In one word - Mindfulness.

#MAXOUT Your Life

The Anthology of Balaji: A Guide to Technology, Truth, and Building the Future - Another anthology along the lines of the Ravikant book by the same editor. Some provocative ideas, worth reading, but overall need not have been a book.

Hell Yeah or No: What's Worth Doing

Book I Re-read

Congo - Never gets old. Crichton usually forms part of my lunch/dinner time reads.

Timeline - Another favourite Crichton. 

Rising Sun - One more.

Jurassic Park - And one more.

The Lost World - This sequel, like most sequels, is terrible.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

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