Books read: 17 (9 Fiction, 8 Non-Fiction)

Unique Authors: 16 (10 Men, 6 Women)

Most Read Authors: R.F. Kuang (2)

Average Rating: 4.03 (3.83 Fiction, 4.25 Non-Fiction)

warning: some spoilers may be contained in the following reviews

The Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel

A simple, quick, and insightful read about how people relate to money. It’s structured as a series of 19 short stories, with an overarching financial lesson embedded into each narrative. A lot of it was stuff I had already learned about / intuited, but it’s nice to have a gentle reminder. Should be a must read for every high school senior. 4.5/5

Stay True - Hua Hsu

This memoir chronicles Hsu’s life, with a focus on his friendship with his best friend in college who passed away. I loved the writing style - Hsu is able to articulate the banalities of day-to-day college life while weaving in his philosophical ruminations on the Asian-American experience, friendship, music, and history. A passage that made me think: “Derrida remarked that friendship’s driver isn’t the pursuit of someone who is just like you. A friend, he wrote, would ‘choose knowing rather than being known.’ I had always thought it was the other way around.”

I also enjoyed the nostalgia from reading about his college days at Berkeley - I could clearly visualize all of the locations mentioned throughout the book. One thing that particularly stood out to me was how drastically different the technological landscape was only a mere 15-20 years before my college days - the internet was nascent (they shared one computer in their Unit 3 triple and only initially used it to check email) and they were all listening to music on tapes and CDs. Things change so fast. 4/5

Levels of the Game - John McPhee

I’m always on the hunt for great books about tennis, which is how I stumbled upon this one. It details the 1968 U.S. Open semifinal between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. The book begins on the first point of the match, and ends on the last. Throughout, you learn about the respective personal histories of the two players.

There were so many interesting pieces of tennis history I picked up - neither of them were professionals and actually had other jobs (this was when the open era was just getting going), the concept of a tiebreaker didn’t exist, and the backdrop of the civil rights movement painted an underdog narrative (Ashe is black, can be considered tennis’s version of Jackie Robinson, and I was rooting for him the whole time while reading this). After reading about Ashe’s life and character, it makes me happy that the flagship stadium court at the U.S. Open today (and the largest tennis stadium in the world) is named after him.

A random aside - the U.S. Open used to be played at Forest Hills before it was moved to its current location in Flushing Meadows, and the grounds are now used for concerts in the summer. I went to an Odesza concert there in 2022, and I remember dancing on the floor that night thinking it was so surreal that I was in the same place legends like Ashe, Laver, Connors, and Borg played some of their biggest matches.

McPhee has a journalistic style - this reads like an extra long New Yorker piece.

If you decide to read this, please don’t look up the score of the match beforehand - it was so much more fun not knowing and being kept on my toes while I read. 5/5

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone - Lori Gottlieb

Gottlieb is a psychotherapist who recounts her personal experience with therapy as well as the stories of her patients’ journeys.

My perspective on therapy has historically been kind of dubious.

The skeptic in me asks: “how do you measure efficacy since it’s such a subjective endeavor? Are we over-rationalizing our emotions? Are there considerably easier and proven intervention mechanisms better then therapy to improve people’s mental states?”