Book-Review

I have a deep interest in artificial intelligence and how it will change the world. I regularly present sessions on what I see coming, technology-wise. Many examples in those sessions are based on breakthroughs related to medicine. So I was pleased to get to listen to Eric Topol’s book Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again.

Eric spends time discussing how much of existing medicine is functional yet quite broken. Very few doctors now really connect with and relate to their patients. Worse, misdiagnoses are becoming far too frequent, arguably because of this disconnection.

2021-02-03

Another book that I listened to recently, also fits into the “I nearly didn’t get past the first chapter” category. It was Atomic Habits by James Clear. By the end of this book though, I realised just how much I’d enjoyed it.

James makes a really interesting study into habits. Far more than anything I’d ever read before.

He makes it so clear how the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions leads to profound life changes. That was already pretty obvious to me but I loved the way he made this so practical. He calls the habits that are formed Atomic Habits.

2021-01-28

I haven’t posted any book reviews lately but I have been getting through quite a few books, so it’s time to rectify that. First up is Gary Vee’s book #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness. I often read or listen to books that cover entrepreneurship. If you’ve read any of these, or listened to any related podcasts, you will have heard of Gary Vee. Gary is a Belarusian-American whose name is Gary Vaynerchuk.

2021-01-21

In the past, I was an unashamed fan of the Dilbert cartoon strip. In recent years though,  the author (Scott Adams) has become a pretty divisive character in and around US politics and life in general. So I was intrigued by his book Win Bigly.

Nowadays, I keep hearing many people refer to him as being very pro-Trump and in the opinion stakes, that immediately cuts him off from half the US population, and the majority of the world.

2020-04-24

I know that many people found Christopher Hitchens a divisive character. Mostly that’s because he very openly, directly questioned, and at times ridiculed, long-held beliefs about religion and about inappropriately revered people. He did not (as the old saying goes) suffer fools gladly. I read Mortality quite a while ago and wanted to wait a while after his death to see how I still felt about it.

Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010 while on a book tour for Hitch-22. Hitchens died in December 2011.

2020-03-20

I mentioned recently that I haven’t been doing as much driving in my car lately, so that’s limited the time I’ve had for listening to audio books. But another one that I did complete on Audible recently was Stories I’d Tell in Bars by Jen Lancaster.

I’ve seen comments about the printed version of this book, that say it’s riddled with typos and grammar/spelling errors but fortunately that wasn’t an issue for me as I listened to the audiobook. The narration of that was fine.

2020-03-06

I haven’t been doing as much driving in my car lately, so that’s limited the time I’ve had for listening to audio books. But one that I did complete recently was AI Super Powers by Kai-Fu Lee. The subtitle is China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.

This is an area that I’ve been really passionate about for the last few years.  I can see AI changing so much of our current world, and much sooner than I think most people will realise.

2020-02-07

I do a lot of speaking at conferences, user groups, online, and other sorts of events. It’s important to constantly improve, so I take notice of any books released on the topic. I recently listened (via Audible) to TED Talks - The Official Ted Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson.

I’ve been a fan of TED and their conference talks for a long time. The overall quality of the talks is very high, and some (like Ken Robinson’s talk on schools killing creativity) set a really high bar.

2020-01-07

I’ve mentioned before that Orin Thomas tends to give me many good book recommendations. The Future of Capitalism by Paul Collier is another of Orin’s recommendations. I notice from the cover that it’s also highly recommended by Bill Gates. So it had to be worth a look.

I ended up listening to this via an Audible audio book. It’s quite a long book at around 9 hours 26 minutes.

Overall, I loved this book. I’d have to say though, that it took me quite a while to get into it. I just didn’t find the first chapters all that compelling. But strangely, I then really did get into it.

2019-11-19

Over the last few months, one of my Kiwi buddies (and fellow member of both the MVP and Microsoft Regional Director programs) Reza Rad has been organizing a bunch of us to write a book that’s a collection of ideas from a number of MVPs. It’s the Power BI MVP Book.

There are a whole lot of authors from a whole lot of different countries: Reza Rad, Anil Maharjan, Indira Bandari, Liam Bastick, Ken Puls, Jesus Gil, Thomas LeBlanc, Ike Ellis, Matt Allington, Leila Etaati, Markus Ehrenmüller, Ashraf Ghonaim, Eduardo Castro, Manohar Punna, Treb Gatte, Gilbert Quevauvilliers, Michael Johnson, Shree Khanal, Asgeir Gunnarsson, Greg Low, Gogula Aryalingam.

2019-08-16