One life, many paths
If you like fun, accessible science fiction with a heavy dose of humor and human moments, this one delivers. It isn’t a long book, it moves quickly, and it kept me (mostly) laughing and turning pages while engaging the scientific aspects to the situation presented in the story in a real way.
At the heart of the story is a single, delightfully absurd premise: the moon literally becomes cheese. It happens instantaneously and without explanation.… Read the rest
First impressions of the INOXTO 30L fastpack after a snowy 5-mile trail run. With a 3L bladder included, is this budget pack worth it?
This book is part memoir, part investigation, and part manual on how professional risk takers — gamblers, investors, military planners, and a few unusual entrepreneurs — think about an uncertain world.
If you’d rather watch instead of reading, check out the video overview below.
What can people who make their living taking risks teach the rest of us? That question drives the book. Silver argues that the world is becoming more complex and uncertain, and that certain people — the ones who live at the edge of risk — have developed mental tools that help them navigate it.… Read the rest
In this book overview, I share my thoughts on A Pattern of Islands by Sir Arthur Grimble, an autobiography that offers a unique glimpse into life in what is now Kiribati, a nation in the South Pacific. Grimble’s account is both a personal memoir and an insightful record from the early 1900s, chronicling his experiences as an English colonial administrator and his deep interactions with the local people and their culture.
If video is more your thing, you can watch the book overview below.… Read the rest
Sometimes, a book comes along that’s more than just a story—it’s a portal to a world and era that feels almost unimaginable today. News From Tartary by Peter Fleming is one of those books. Written nearly a hundred years ago, it chronicles a 2-person “expedition” from what was then Peking (now Beijing) all the way to Kashmir, traversing vast, politically unstable, and little-known regions of Central Asia. As someone fascinated by travel, history, and the people that undertake these travels, this book gave me plenty to think about.… Read the rest
