Letters Remain

Tag: books

  • (Preventing) Manipulation Through Irrationality

    Through the theories discussed in Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational (and largely based on the excerpts in Chris Yeh’s outline of the book), two articles have emerged on different sides of one topic: our irrational decision-making in terms of products and purchases. One on how to take advantage of our irrationality when marketing products, and another…

  • The 50th Law

    Power is greater than happiness, contends Robert Greene in an online discussion with Eliezer Yudkowsky about Fear, Power and Mortality (quality summary thereof), as happiness is fleeting and unremitting. Also discussed in this conversation is strategist Robert Greene’s latest book, The 50th Law: 10 Lessons in Fearlessness, which is the result of an unlikely collaboration with hip…

  • Cory Doctorow’s Experiment: Does Free Work?

    For his next collection of short stories to be published, titled With a Little Help, author and blogger-extraordinaire Cory Doctorow will be running an experiment so that he can see whether his strategy of offering his work for free is working. With prices to range from $0.00 to $10,000 for various packages, Doctorow is to track his…

  • A Philosophy of Happiness

    In Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, six “anxieties of everyday life” are tackled through the work of six philosophers—one for each chapter in the short book. A few years after publication the book was turned into a six-part documentary, Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness. While both the book and the series aren’t rigorous studies…

  • Ebook Readers and Auto-Correcting Books

    With the growing prevalence of ebook readers that can be updated remotely–such as Amazon’s Kindle–could the time of the book riddled with errors be coming to an end? Errors are common in all forms of media, but it is mistakes in the printed word that are perhaps the most pernicious. Once a “fact” has been…

  • Entrepreneurial Reads and Annual Reads

    I’m a real sucker for book lists. Entrepreneurial Reads is a wiki list of suggested reading for entrepreneurs. The list contains books written specifically for entrepreneurs (e.g. The E-Myth Revisited) in addition to much fiction containing entrepreneurial lessons (e.g. The Fountainhead). That link came via What Books Are Worth Reading Once Per Year?–a post by…

  • A Guide to Speed Reading

    The PX Project is a single 3-hour “cognitive experiment” designed to increase your reading speed. Average increases using the technique are apparently in the region of 386%. The technique seems to involve three steps: Minimize the number and duration of fixations per line. Eliminate regression and back-skipping. Use conditioning drills to increase horizontal peripheral vision…

  • Free: Interview with Chris Anderson

    Whether you’ve read it or not, you’re undoubtedly aware that Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail, has written a new book: Free. I haven’t read the book but can likely guess the premise—and given that the unabridged audiobook can be downloaded online I’ll no doubt be giving it a…

  • Books to Ignore

    Like timesink productivity websites, books written purely to instruct us what books to read are inherently counterproductive.  The Second Pass does the opposite, producing a list of ten ‘classic’ books not to read. White Noise by Don DeLillo Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel GarcĂ­a MĂĄrquez The Road by…

  • Art Direction for David Foster Wallace’s Books

    Marie Mundaca on her art direction for a number of David Foster Wallace’s books: It’s a little odd to design interiors for fiction and literary non-fiction. It’s just text—what is there to do? There are the obvious things, like leaving enough space at the margins. Basically, the designer’s job is to pick a font that…