Overview

Storytelling is one of the most underappreciated traits in the modern world. In a society where people are bombarded by tons of information each day, it becomes harder to make a product stand out simply by listing out hard facts because there are a million others messages that sound just like yours. This is where storytelling sets you apart from your competitors because stories have unique propositions that capture your customers' attention and provoke their emotions. However, storytelling is not an easy skill to acquire since it is not often taught in school. In this book, Hall does a fantastic…

Overview

Meditations is one of the most renowned pieces of ancient texts, and for good reasons: it’s important Stoicism literature that contains thoughts and beliefs of a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

I read this book to understand Stoicism, a school of philosophy that influences many generations and can still be found in the modern world. Before reading, I had the impression that Stoicism is the “Philosophy of Stones”, in which people are expected to behave perfectly rational and strictly emotionless. While part of it is true, there is much more to Stoicism than I previously imagined, and it has taught me…

Overview

How to be happy? It is the question of eternal debate between science and religion, between ancient and modern world. Each party presents its own arguments and they often seem contradictory. In his book, Jonathan Haidt, an American social psychologist and a professor, sets out on a quest to answer this question. The Happiness Hypothesis is a practical book consisted of 10 lessons, which meant to be structured like a college-level course. Each surrounds a topic from love to work to religion. In the last lesson, Haidt unites all previous lessons and presents the final hypothesis.

Overall, I find this…

Overview

Walden is a book that is very personal to me. It is one of the books I tried to read before but couldn’t fully comprehend its meaning. The first time I read Walden was in high school. As a teenager who was unsure what to do with his life, Walden made me very depressed because I couldn’t see the meaning of one’s existence and why striving for anything would matter in the grand scheme of things. Five years later, after I stepped into society for a while and tasted the different aspects of life, I picked up this book again…

Overview

Not sure if it is just because I’m just having “one of those weeks” or COVIDepression finally caught up with me, I felt very sluggish and anxious for the past few days. I constantly worried about different aspects of my life such as my finance, my career, etc. Amid all the uneasiness, I decided to pick up this book I bought a while ago. I heard of the author Thich Nhat Hanh as a famous monk, but I didn’t expect much from this merely 200-page book. Contradictory to my preconceived notion, this is one of the most insightful and calming…

Overview

Bad Blood is a clear demonstration that real life can be even crazier than fiction writers’ wildest imagination. The non-fiction book details the rise and fall of Theranos, a multi-billion-dollar scam that promised to revolutionize health care and fooled almost everyone including big names like Henry Kissinger and George Schulz. This is one of the few books that I couldn’t stop myself from reading. The story is so breathtaking and thrilling that I was so shocked by what happened that I questioned if it is even real life. Carreyrou, the journalist that exposes the whole scam as well as the…

Overview

Before reading this book, I heard of the name “Richard Feynman” mostly from two places, one is from physics books such as A Brief History of Time, the other place is from the “Feynman technique”, which is essentially a way of learning through teaching. Without any background knowledge of Mr. Feynman, I thought he would be an insanely smart scientist and an eloquent teacher. After this book, to some degree, I was right, but there is much more depth to his character than I previously imagined. The book a collection of stories told from the first-person perspective. Thanks to the…

Overview

How does rocket science have anything remotely have to do with my life? I was a bit confused and skeptical when I first picked up this book, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn many practical insights that I could immediately apply to my day to day operations. Even though I enjoy reading books on space exploration, another worry that bothered me initially is the use of arcane, technical languages. The concerns were also immediately dismissed when the author spoke in an understandable term and was more focused on the ways of thinking rather than the rocket science itself. In…