Quartz 4

Reading List

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New Reads List with Summaries

  • Atomic Habits - James Clear As one of the most hyped up books of the 21st century it’s hard to expect little from this title. I can’t say the insight provided is at the level expected, thought still worth reading. Quality of insight provided, along with helpful exercises and tips makes it still a worthwhile read. Takeaways: Habit Stacking and %1 rule
  • Beautiful C++ - J Guy Davidson, Kate Gregory
  • Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzche
  • C++ Concurrency in Action - Anthony Williams
  • C++ Software Design - Klaus Iglberger
  • Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins Very simply one of my favourite reads. Just read it if you haven’t yet. Takeaways: Silencing your governor, Subconscious limiter, Cookie jar, Train Hard to think hard, Seek discomfort. Genuine raw storytelling and advice from someone qualified to lecture.
  • Computer Systems (A Programmer’s Perspective) - Bryant O’Hallaron
  • Cracking the Coding Interview - Gayle Laakmann McDowell
  • Deep Work - Cal Newport Less engaging than hoped. Primarily out of date and oversung wisdom. Surely good for its time, but likely not worth a read.
  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications - Martin Kleppmann
  • Design Patterns - Gang of Four Contains the fundamental reasoning that sites like refactoring-guru lack. Beautifully explains not just use cases, implementation, high-level thinking etc for all the mentioned patterns, but also covers the need for design patterns and the philosophies that govern OOP. Highly recommended. Though I’d recommend researching modern use cases for many of the patterns (e.g. singleton with thread safety and testing), most of the discussed topics really hold up well today. My biggest gripes with the content is that a lot of overuse (imo) of encapsulation and OOP based thinking was involved in examples and I don’t believe represent good practices today (obviously). My favourites were the Bridge, Flyweight, Proxy, Memento, and Visitor patterns.
  • Discourses and Selected Writing - Epictetus
  • Discourses on Methods and the Meditations - Descartes
  • Inside the Machine - Jon Stokes
  • In The Buddha’s Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi
  • Letters From a Stoic - Seneca
  • Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
  • Men Among Ruins - Julius Evola
  • Neuroplasticity - MIT Press (Moheb Constandi) A lot less technical than expected from MIT Press, though wonderfully brief and explains some interesting research at a very high level.
  • Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle
  • Operating Systems in Three Easy Pieces (OSTEP) - Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau
  • Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
  • Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman
  • Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu Despite the lower rating, I’d highly recommend reading this one. My rating stems from a difference of opinion regarding the content, though I find the ideas refreshing and of high insight. Possibly a great read to challenge existing opinions, as it was for me. I find the ideas behind large detachment to life and desires to seem shallow though it’s likely I am just not enlightened enough to get it. I do however agree with many of the author’s opinions, even if just partially. Takeaways: Better to let go than overflow; The twisted branch is whole; False power requires study, true power requires the opposite; A dull leader leads a happy people; A winner in war is a guest to conflict.
  • TCP / IP Illustrated - Kevin R. Fall, W Richard Stevens
  • The Analects - Confucius
  • The Art of War - Sun Tzu
  • The Art of Writing Efficient Programs - Fedor J. Pikus
  • The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) Changed my perspective on predictability and unknown events. Discussions on scale within Extremistan and Mediocritsan demonstrate the collective understanding of statistics (Gauss). Takeaways: Survivorship bias, Preventative measures, Extrimistan scaling
  • The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Musashi
  • The Charisma Myth - Olivia Fox Cabane Overly verbose, and yet still dense with information on charisma best practices. Takeaways: Confidence changes appeal (prepare, dress, posture), Balance goodness with assertiveness and selfishness,
  • The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  • The C Programming Language - Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie This is not the ansi version, therefore incredibly out of date (variables still need to be declared outside loops and more fun). Cool pocket ref (if it were smaller), and interesting artifact to have read.
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • The Illiad - Homer
  • The Odyssey - Homer
  • The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt
  • The Prince - Machiavelli
  • The Republic - Plato Dialogue and proofs worth reading. begins by asserting the complexity of goodness, pedastalizes baseness only to formulate a robust counter argument in a better half of the book. Discusses the cycling of ideologies over time, the attempt to train goodness and the purity of soul. Along the way, Plato tackles counter arguments through allegory that span chapters. Takeaways: Isolating goodness from birth and the corruptness of good men and torture of a tyrannical soul
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson The wine mom’s self-help book holds up well. It covers the changing of principals and buddist-like serenity in impressively few words.
  • Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Working With Emotional Intelligence - Daniel Goleman Unfortunately an arduous read. The one good takeaway being the provided allegories to reflect on using emotional intelligence. Worth reading the first half only.
  • - ****

C++ and Fundamentals

  • 1 - C++ a Beginners Guide | Opted to read learncpp instead
  • 2 - C++17: in Detail | Opted to read learncpp instead
  • 3 - Design Patterns - Gang of Four
  • 4 - Beautiful C++ - J Guy Davidson, Kate Gregory
  • 5 - Operating Systems in Three Easy Pieces (OSTEP) - Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau
  • 6 - Inside the Machine - Jon Stokes
  • 7 - TCP / IP Illustrated - Kevin R. Fall, W Richard Stevens
  • 8 - C++ Concurrency in Action - Anthony Williams
  • 9 - C++ Software Design - Klaus Iglberger
  • 10 - The Art of Writing Efficient Programs - Fedor G. Pikus

Philosophy Reading for 2026

  • January - Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
  • February - In The Buddha’s Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi
  • March - Free - (The Art of War - Sun Tzu)
  • April - Discourses and Selected Writing - Epictetus
  • May - The Republic - Plato
  • June - Free - (The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Musashi)
  • July - Nicomachean Ethics - Aristotle
  • August - The Illiad - Homer
  • September - Free - (Meditations - Marcus Aurelius)
  • October - Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • November - Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
  • December - Free - (Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzche)

Philosophy Reading for 2027

  • January - The Analects - Confucius
  • February - Letters From a Stoic - Seneca
  • March - Free - ( - ****)
  • April - The Epic of Gilgamesh
  • May - Discourses on Methods and the Meditations - Descartes
  • June - Free - ( - ****)
  • July - Men Among Ruins - Julius Evola
  • August - The Odyssey - Homer
  • September - Free - ( - ****)
  • October - The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  • November - The Prince - Machiavelli
  • December - Free - ( - ****)

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