piabo's Reviews (301)

An easy read on the wonders of human genetics and development.

Life truly is remarkable, and evolutionary developmental biology is a very fascinating field.

The book is mostly neutral and scientific. If you are not interested in the biological background but rather in social implementations, look somewhere else.

Some good parts, but does not work for me as a whole.

This book is a little too ambitious in trying to explain the quantum world to non-scientists. The book consists of three parts that all seem to be for a different audience.
The first part is about the difference of relative and absolute small things and introduces the wave particle duality of light and electron. The concepts are explained with lovely analogies and even though it had a lot of maths I enjoyed reading it.
The second part is mostly about atoms and molecular electron orbits. This could be compared to high school chemistry lessons. But I liked the emphasis on quantum theory, and actually think I understand the topics better now.
And the last part is basically about everyday molecules like alcohol, fats, or greenhouse gases. I understand the intention, but I think it was very misplaced. I really did not get much from this part.

So while I think the author is brilliant in their field and made a great effort to write this book, I can not recommend it as a whole. The three parts don't feel like they connect well, and it might be either too hard to too boring at some points.
If I ever find books that do well in either of the three parts above, I will update this review.

This is one of the books I have to reread a lot. There is so much wisdom in it.
Wow, how come I only learned about it recently?

Cute little story. Is it even a children's book?

I needed someone to give me a summary of useful activities to become more present. And this book this exactly that.
Definitely going to try to implement as many of these stoic-inspired activities, like journaling, going for walks, owning less, build routines, into my life.
I think it fits greatly with the first book I read this year ("Atomic Habits") as it emphasized the importance of rest and intentionality when choosing what activities to engage in.

The author gives insights into some famous people's lives and how they used (or did not use) stillness to become as extraordinary as they are/were. I always find those claims very interesting.

(might revisit this review towards the end of the year with updates from my self-experiments with the advice from this book)

Read this for my Research Method course at uni.

The book had interesting things to say about doing research. And some good advice. I recommend everyone who wants to do research to read a book like this one. It gives good background. Yey.

A great overview about data, probabilistic predictions, forecasts, uncertainty, and noise.
One of those books most people should have read. I think it was the right mix of in depth and breadth analysis, although I was still sometimes a little bored, either because I already knew the concepts from school, or because I am really not that interested in Baseball and Poker.

After this read, I want to question my assumptions on this world more and try to stop and think about probabilities a little more often.

I also really recommend reading the 2020 preface twice. Once in the beginning and then again at the end with all the new knowledge.

This has been on my reading list for years, and I regret not having read it earlier.

So many of the believes I hold about human beings including our past, present, and future has been challenged and put into perspective. How could one person think about all these things and put them into one book?

I am left with questions about why we exist and what we want to make out of the fact that we do.
I am amazed.

I was confused in the beginning, but it slowly made sense. At least to the extent that I could follow what was written.
I loved it at the end.

It started a little slow, and I was honestly not convinced in the beginning. I think the book could have been a little shorter while still conveying the same information.

But overall pretty cool stuff to think about. I liked the points on the last page especially, and hope to keep the three questions Harari asks us in mind while I walk through life.

I think this is a very interesting book that definitely makes me question some of my assumptions about love.
However, I did not really like the writing style. The many personal stories of the author felt intrusive into the privacy and image of these people, not because it is bad to talk about the challenges other people face in love (to some extent I think it is mean to expose people like that, but at the same time this might be one of the reasons many people have problems talking about the "taboo" topic love), but because she seems to overgeneralize their behaviour. Blaming it on the fact that they are men in a sexist world, grew up in a capitalistic society.

I wish bell hooks could have been more specific in many of the claims she made. But maybe I am just reading too many natural sciences books, and I am used to hard facts. I guess love does not work like that.

(I would actually almost give 2 stars only, but I will think about this book for some more time before I do any low rating. Maybe this is one of the books that needs more time to sink in)