
Bill Gates: Books I Read this Summer - clbrook
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/GatesNotesV2/Personal/Books-I-Read-This-Summer
======
jacques_chester
I'm finding that writing reviews, even very surface-level reviews, of books I
am reading is helping me to derive a lot more value from them.

Firstly, while reading, I find myself reflecting more on the book. After all
-- I will be writing a review, I need to be an active participant.

Secondly, I find that books will often spark some thinking on a topic and the
review will essentially morph into an essay. I wrote a 3000-word review of one
book[1] that diverged into fuzzy logic, theories of jurisprudence and a few
other areas in order to properly explain my reaction. Right now I'm writing a
review of _Waltzing with Bears_ that will diverge into financial accounting
and a pet theory of mine about how tools create paradigms that shape entire
bodies of knowledge.

Third, books can often be connected to one another. I find that my reviews
tend to link to each other. Not because I am trying to drive internal link
traffic (I'm basically a nobody in internet terms, it's not worth the bother).
But book A will have tangentially touched on the topic of book B; or perhaps
book C illuminates something only poorly discussed in book D. To the point
where I refer to books from before I started reviewing with an "unreviewed"
annotation.

Finally, some people find my reviews useful. My hobby is Olympic-style
weightlifting and I do a lot of reading both on it directly and on allied
subjects (eg, anatomy). Fellow strength nerds have found my reviews useful in
helping them select books for their own libraries. It's nice when people give
you positive feedback on something like that.

[1] <http://chester.id.au/2012/04/09/review-drift-into-failure/>

------
BadassFractal
Any thoughts on that Moonwalking With Einstein book? I'd love to improve
information retention in my day to day life, especially in software. I'm not
so much interested in remembering the to-do list as retaining broader concepts
for long periods of time. I'm lucky enough to get to learn a ton of things
every day, but my long term retention of them is terrible unless I spend
considerable time applying these ideas in practice, which is often not
practically possible. This leads to a lot of wasted time, it's as if I never
even read the darn thing.

Often, and this is the sad part, I won't even bother reading something because
I know I'll forget it almost immediately, unless I have a block of time
available to dedicate to trying it out in practice.

For example, I'm really fond of the underpinnings of programming language
design and compilers, and it's thousands over thousands of pages of
information (most of it very interesting and useful to me), but I fail to
retain the vast majority of the great info and need to continuously go back to
the texts whenever I'm in doubt about something. There were a couple of
valuable techniques recommended in Pragmatic Bookshelf's Pragmatic Thinking
and Learning, such as "now pretend you have to teach this concept to your
former self who knows nothing about this", which supposedly helps with
retention and internalization into the brain's "web of known facts".

Is there anything like that in the book? Would it be of any help?

~~~
charlieflowers
You should look into Anki and "Spaced Repetition."

The gist is that you submit a bunch of facts you want to remember to a
computer program, and that program applies an algorithm to figure out when you
are likely to be about to forget something. The program quizzes you just as
you were about to forget (but before you do), and the act of responding to
that quiz renews and strengthens the memory.

Powerful. I've been using it for myself and my 9 year old daughter, and it has
been very effective. Many use it to build foreign language vocabulary, or
memory of Chinese pictographs.

(Note: This is not the subject of the "Moonwalk with Einstein" book -- I
mention it as an additional tool for helping with the memory goals you
stated).

Some Links:

Anki: <http://ankisrs.net/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition>

Article on Piotr Wozniak and Spaced Repetition:
[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all)

~~~
dsrguru
I'm really glad you brought up spaced repetition since spaced repetition and
the techniques described in Moonwalking with Einstein happen to be two of the
items on my relatively small list of the most amazing things humans are
capable of that they neglected to teach me in kindergarten. I'm sure most
people on HN are unfamiliar with both, so I'd like to give a brief overview of
what they are and how they work.

The techniques described in Moonwalking with Einstein require serious time
investment up front, but allow you to cultivate a memory that rivals that of
people with savantism (who incidentally tend to use the same general
techniques but do so naturally). Spaced repetition doesn't produce _as_
amazing results but doesn't require initial time investment and is a far more
efficient method of memorizing data than conventional approaches. The only
downside to spaced repetition is that most software implementations of it
require daily review and don't work optimally if you miss a day (recent
versions of the proprietary SuperMemo, Piotr Wozniak's own software, are
supposed to be much more forgiving), but you don't need to invest much time
each day.

So how exactly do these two memory techniques work? Spaced repetition is
predicated on the notion that the longer you wait before reviewing data, the
longer that information will stick in your head. That is, as long as you are
able to recall the data when you review it. If you wait too long, you'll
completely forget the data. So there exists an optimal length of time to wait
before reviewing a piece of data, and as with the American game show The Price
is Right, you can approach that optimal value by increasing your estimate, but
the moment your estimate exceeds that optimal value, it becomes less useful
than all possible underestimates. The goal of spaced repetition systems (SRS),
such as the software programs SuperMemo, Mnemosyne, and Anki, is to adapt to
the user's mind and figure out this optimal interval to wait before showing a
flash card again, as opposed to conventional flash card systems that review
each card every day. Not only does spaced repetition greatly increase the
value of each time you review a card by committing it further into your long
term memory, but it also greatly decreases the number of flash cards you need
to review each day.

The art of memory (aka method of loci), which is the technique described in
Moonwalking with Einstein, works by taking advantage of the fact that our
visual and spacial memory is far better than our memory for arbitrary facts.
The gist of the technique is to convert data that you want to memorize into
vivid images (the funnier or cruder the better) and arrange those images at
discrete points in a predefined order along a spacial layout you know well
(the layout is called a "memory palace", but it can be your home, school,
office, neighborhood, favorite video game map, etc.). To recall the data, all
you have to do is retrace your steps and remind yourself what each image
means. Combining this technique with spaced repetition, you can commit
thousands of pieces of data to a memory palace, wait a few hours to retrace
your steps to recall the information, retrace your steps again the next day,
then again a few days later, then again a week later, then a month later, etc.
In this way, about two or three hours distributed over 5 or so weeks (maybe
with one more review the next year) will let you memorize thousands of pieces
of data permanently. The stuff you can do with your mind once you know more
efficient memory techniques is truly amazing.

~~~
tayl0r
I'm having trouble figuring out what kinds of "vivid images" you would use for
memorizing foreign language vocabulary words.

For example, I'm trying to learn German right now. It seems obvious that you
would use images of the English translation in your memory palace, but then
you would just have the problem of remembering the German word that each image
signifies.

Or going the other way, from German to English, what images would you use in
your memory palace to represent German words? How would you tie them back to
English?

help?

~~~
dsrguru
Figuring out how to encode various classes of data into images is one of the
more challenging aspects of the method of loci. Also, memorizing an
associative array of data is less natural in the method of loci than
memorizing ordered data since the way you recall the data is by tracing your
steps through the memory palace in your mind. I guess you could place two
images at each location, functioning sort of like a LISP alist (list of pairs
where the first element in each pair represents a key and the second a value),
but that still doesn't answer your question about how to create the images.
Maybe go syllable by syllable? For example, if you wanted to remember that
kochen is kitchen, you could visualize a macaw perched on the shoulder of
Barbie's boyfriend while the latter flipped burgers on a toy grill. The "caw"
sound in my dialect of English is identical to the "ko" in kochen, and
Barbie's boyfriend Ken would be enough to trigger my memory of "-chen", so I'd
be like "Right! This was illustrating that the German word kochen means to
cook."

Spaced repetition lends itself a lot more naturally to memorizing foreign
language vocabulary words than the method of loci, so you might want to use
that approach instead. Within spaced repetition, you can also use vivid images
as a sort of scaffolding to increase the odds you'll remember the word before
the next review, and you can eventually let that image go once you start
recalling it easily. The more connections you form to other thoughts, the more
firmly a fact will be anchored in your mind, so you might as well use mental
images if you can come up withthem, even in spaced repetition. James Heisig
uses visual mnemonics to teach several thousand Chinese characters in
Remembering the Kanji[1] (Chinese characters for use in Japanese) and
Remembering the Hanzi[2] (Chinese characters for use in Chinese), and
communities like AJATT[3] and Reviewing the Kanji[4] advocate combining
Heisig's approach with spaced repetition.

[1]
[http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...](http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Remembering_the_Kanji_1.htm)

[2]
[http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Rem...](http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/Remembering%20Hanzi%201.htm)

[3] <http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com>

[4] <http://kanji.koohii.com/>

~~~
tayl0r
Thanks. So I was understanding it correctly then, it is difficult to use this
type of memory method with foreign languages.

I will stick with spaced repetition =)

------
sixQuarks
It's kind of funny that he recommends: "Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put
You on the Road to Real Happiness"

Step 1: Be worth billions of dollars

On a serious note, I realize that money doesn't buy happiness. Proven
scientifically over and over again, people get used to their situations
usually within 6 months, good or bad, and get back to their "normal" happiness
levels regardless.

~~~
AVTizzle
If I remember correctly though - there is a "happiness-threshold" of income,
below which life-satisfaction and income are positively correlated.

I think that number for most of the US was around $70k or something. So below
that number, income is correlated to happiness. Above that threshold, and the
two are unrelated.

It makes sense. Different things start to matter once you have your basic
physiological needs in place. But you have to secure that base.

~~~
doktrin
The study you're thinking of noted that $75k was the level above which
additional income would not significantly impact "happiness".

While there are a multitude of caveats needed for any such claim, the most
obvious is the fact that $75k means very different things depending on where
you live.

The WSJ adjusted the number for cost of living, below :

[http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/09/07/what-salary-
buys-h...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/09/07/what-salary-buys-
happiness-in-your-city/)

All of the above should be taken with a grain of salt, but the basic TL;DR is
that the figure is actually ~$100k+ in most major US cities.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
The flip side of this is that you can also achieve many of the same objectives
(i.e. things that impact happiness) on a smaller budget by paying attention to
the relevant research on what really makes us happy. The value of happiness
research is where it shows us how bad we are at predicting our own
preferences. Incorrect predictions are expensive.

------
gbog
I find it very disturbing and revealing that such a high level and respected
guy did read no real book, I mean real books that will be read in 50 years,
literature or philosophy, or classics like Seneque, Proust, Montaigne,
Austeen.

It maybe he read them all already? Probably not, because if you read Austeen
you probably can't spend all your holidays reading self motivation books.

~~~
irahul
> I find it very disturbing and revealing that such a high level and respected
> guy did read no real book, I mean real books that will be read in 50 years,
> literature or philosophy, or classics like Seneque, Proust, Montaigne,
> Austeen.

Bill Gates is reading about how much college students learn in college instead
of reading Kant and sipping wine by his fireplace and being a pretentious
douche-bag.

Oh, the horror. What has the world come to.

EDIT: If it didn't occur to you, the definitions of _real_ , _classic_ and
_important_ are different for a random punk on an internet forum and Bill
Gates. Also, Bill Gates doesn't seem like a guy who would read classics so
that he can make blog posts about it.

~~~
bitwize
gbog sounds a bit like the main character from Verne's _Paris au XXe siècle_ ,
a classics scholar who is shunned for searching for timeless truth in a
modernist, materialist world that focuses only on technology and business.

The classics are classics for a reason: they are universal and timeless, and
contain deep truths about the human condition that resonate forever. If Gates
had read them early in life, maybe he would not have developed the predatory
personality that characterized his business career and Microsoft in general?

~~~
gbog
Yes, that's my point, and the anti-culture trend I can feel on HN, while
somewhat justified, because there are culture douche in some places, is
missing the bigger picture: culture, classic books, and so on, are the only
way to build a better world.

~~~
irahul
> and the anti-culture trend I can feel on HN

What do you mean by anti-culture trend?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture>

Of all the definitions listed here, what on earth would anti-culture mean?
This is the 20th century definition:

 _In the 20th century, "culture" emerged as a central concept in anthropology,
encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be attributed to genetic
inheritance. Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two
meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences
with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2) the distinct
ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and
represented their experiences, and acted creatively._

If by culture, you mean the practices which have been followed for some
time(won't that be tradition?), count me in as anti culture and tradition.
"Something exists for a long time, hence it is useful" is bullshit. Culture
and traditions are mostly dynamic, and people who think of a them as a static
rather than ever changing snapshot of current human behavior are some of the
biggest, bigoted assholes I have ever seen.

> culture, classic books, and so on, are the only way to build a better world.

Do you have anything other than your personal opinion to back up
culture(whatever that means) or classic books building better world?

~~~
gbog
There is another meaning: culture is what a cultivated man has. I think this
meaning is continental, French and German. It is something one person gains
with time by broadening his familiarity with the best products of the human
mind, like classic books, paintings, etc.

~~~
irahul
> There is another meaning: culture is what a cultivated man has.

Cultivated as in "educated and refined"? And somehow who doesn't give a shit
about Kant isn't educated or refined?

> It is something one person gains with time by broadening his familiarity
> with the best products of the human mind, like classic books, paintings,
> etc.

Expanding your horizons is good. Claiming reading obscure books is the way
towards a better world is douchebaggery.

------
metatation
Surprising to me is that Amazon is charging _more_ for the Kindle version than
the hard cover of "Awakening Joy" ($19.34 vs $17.16):
[http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Joy-Steps-That-
Happiness/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Joy-Steps-That-
Happiness/dp/055380703X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347758067&sr=8-1&keywords=Awakening+joy)

~~~
corkeh
Weird, it's showing up as $15.99 for me.

~~~
metatation
Seems like there a general trend toward lower pricing transparency in online
retail. Airlines have been doing this for years...sucks that it's spreading
everywhere.

------
ahquresh
I find it amazing that Bill Gates seems to still have the time and passion to
read books that will help him grow as an individual with everything that he
probably has going on in his life and everything he has accomplished. Over the
past couple of years, I have personally have had a hard time keeping up with
reading habits due to school and job demands. I still read, but look to
reading as a relaxing activity as in picking up Game of Thrones for an hour
when I have it. I guess that's what makes Bill Gates who he is.

~~~
jlarocco
What? He's a retired multi-billionaire.

If he doesn't have all the time he wants to read whatever he wants, then he's
doing something very, very wrong.

------
alid
Thanks for posting this! I look forward to reading Bill's full review of
Academically Adrift - higher education is ripe for the disrupt.

------
additive
It's amusing to see Bill Gates upset about college students not learning much
and many not finishing. He's a billionaire. But he's also a dropout. And now
he's reading self-help books.

I'd like to see Bill Gates go back to school and earn a degree or two. Is that
a bad thing to do? Why? He obviously has the time and money. But how dare I
even suggest the idea? Who am I compared to Bill Gates? A mere plebian. So why
would I suggest it? Beause it would be a great example to set. In my opinion.
Not sure if he is a believer in setting examples and the tendency of young
people to emulate "role models". Like, e.g., billionaire dropouts.

~~~
tayl0r
That would also be a good way for him to see what college is really like,
since he is so intent on fixing it.

(I'm a dropout too)

------
at-fates-hands
The academically adrift book was quite interesting, although I disagree with
the conclusion. For the most part, I find the first two years of college are
really more about filtering out those who are there to party and those who are
there to learn and get a degree. If the same results were achieved on third or
fourth year students (assuming most students are in for 5 years these days),
then I would be concerned.

------
marcamillion
What's curious is that none of the links to the books are on Amazon. I wonder
if he did that intentionally.

All of them go to the publisher - which seems a bit odd.

~~~
manaskarekar
Other than the fact that the Publisher's link is 'more right' to link to, it
may just be the fact that Amazon's a competitor in the tablet space.

~~~
marcamillion
I know it may be 'more right'...but if some random 'tech famous person' were
writing this post, which links would they use? More likely than not, they
would use Amazon's links.

This seems like it took extra effort to look for these titles on each of their
publisher's sites.

~~~
manaskarekar
_"I know it may be 'more right'...but if some random 'tech famous person' were
writing this post, which links would they use? More likely than not, they
would use Amazon's links."_

I don't think Bill Gates needs the referral link revenue from Amazon ;)

~~~
marcamillion
I wasn't alluding to affiliate revenue. Rather just an easier experience for
users.

------
chrismealy
Is there a HN filter to weed out "rich man has opinions" type stories?

~~~
irahul
> Is there a HN filter to weed out "rich man has opinions" type stories?

Yes. The title says "rich man has opinions". Don't click the link, don't read
the comments and don't post comments about how you didn't want to see this.

------
fts89
On Kindle Store:

A Nation of Wusses:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007OWRBEK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007OWRBEK/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007OWRBEK&linkCode=as2)

Moonwalking with Einstein:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004H4XI5O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004H4XI5O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004H4XI5O&linkCode=as2)

The Art of being Unreasonable:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007WLU96A/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007WLU96A/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007WLU96A&linkCode=as2)

Academically Adrift:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LE9ILS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LE9ILS/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004LE9ILS&linkCode=as2)

Awakening Joy:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030DHPDO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030DHPDO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&tag=asdfdsa-20&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0030DHPDO&linkCode=as2)

------
sproketboy
The Road Ahead first edition? You know the one where you forgot to mention the
world wide web and had to recall it?

