As the year is almost over, it’s time to list the books I’ve read. I always aim for 24 a year, which I never reach, but this year has been particularly pitiful. This is mostly due to the fact that I don’t have ~40 minutes a day on public transport anymore, and I haven’t put these 40 minutes anywhere else. Oh well, something to strife for next year.
The books I’ve read:
SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Just like in Freakonomics before, they’re showing surprising facts about all sorts of things, like the health effects to the baby caused by their mothers observing Ramadan, or ways of tracking terrorists through their banking patterns. Entertaining. If you’re interested in this, you might also want to check out their podcast at freakonomics.com.
The 4-Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss
I suppose I mostly read this because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about and I had a free copy of the book. I find Tim Ferriss very annoying. He can’t be bad at anything is the gist of this book – anything he does, he masters. Or so he says. He’s certainly a great self-promoter and the book does have entertaining bits, but also caused me lots of eye-rolling. He claims to also have learned German in next to no time, but I couldn’t really find a demonstration of that. (There is a video he recorded for the German Amazon.de website, but the way he pronounces things and puts his pauses indicates to me that he didn’t really know that well what he ways saying.) In short, I don’t recommend this book. (This review is actually pretty spot-on.)
In addition to these books, I’ve also started Die 101 wichtigsten Fragen: Japan by Coulmas/Stalpers and Watching the English by Kate Fox. They’re both very good and interesting so far and I’ll most likely finish them… eventually.
So yes, rather pathetic that in 365 days I managed to read all of two books. I intend to do better in 2015!
