Sarah Schumacher

Andy Greenberg has quickly become one of my favorite writers. His pieces for Wired are amazing, but this is the first book of his I’ve read, and it won’t be the last.

He has a masterful way of writing where he simply disappears and you’re fully inside of the story. And not just because “technothriller” is an apt description. His writing is effortless and unobtrusive. I particularly appreciate how he draws out and subtly highlights the importance of small details: a chance meeting in a coffeeshop resulting in a breakthrough, a single search result mentioned at the right time that saves an entire case. It’s an immersive experience, with never a hint of unwieldy dialogue and only a rare first person mention of himself or his role in the interviews. He centers the subjects with enough background to humanize their roles and keep them straight in your mind, weaving threads together so you’re able to see the big picture of many separate ongoing investigations and entities.

He also explains tech constructs simply and effectively. There are no long asides about the blockchain, just enough well-crafted explanations to understand the impact. The end result is the feeling that every sentence is chosen with care; he’s clearly extremely detail-oriented and thorough, which made this a joy to read. I’m also glad to see dissenting voices included in the discussion of the impact of crypto and thoughtful source notes.

This book is essentially an argument for niching down (grow one prize-winning “pumpkin”), with a focus on streamlining your processes and delivering great customer experience. It’s a high level approach with very doable action steps at the end of each chapter, written in the author’s colorful, I’ve-been-there, slightly zany way.

Read this if you’re an established business/stuck in the grind/trying to get past that initial plateau of growth. I agree with his assessment of stages; that not every business owner is ready to make the hard choice to niche down, or the scary choice to fire the bad clients. If you’re ready to do what it takes and you like informal, actionable writing, pick this one up.

If you want to dive more into the process side of things, pick up his book Clockwork. I feel like that is a natural follow-up to The Pumpkin Plan.

"I tried to become Frank's definition of an entrepreneur, which, I later learned, is the only definition of an entrepreneur: "You're not an entrepreneur yet, Mike. Entrepreneurs don't do most of the work. Entrepreneurs identify the problems, discover the opportunities and then build processes to allow other people and other things to do the work."" (Mike Michalowicz, The Pumpkin Plan)

Just an incredible book, but hard to describe. It’s about much more than a misunderstood artist. In order to understand what an iconoclast William Blake was, you need a deeper understanding of how others view reality, then and now.

John Higgs deftly weaves discussions of Einstein’s theory of relativity or the nature of dualism into commentary on a fascinating artist’s life and philosophy. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read and it was glorious. As a philosophical, science-loving artist myself, I highly recommend this book if this description resonates with you.

This is a must-read for anyone who even slightly identifies as being a perfectionist. The author is a therapist with the ability to encapsulate deep truths in simple statements; this is currently the all-time most highlighted book in my library (414 highlights).

While she presents 5 types of perfectionists as personalities she’s noticed in her practice, this isn’t a huge talking point in the book and I love her caveat at the end that, like many other frameworks presented by other authors, her labels are just additional lenses that might be helpful.

The entire book is uplifting, encouraging, discusses trusting yourself, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, self-worth, types of perfectionism, being present, making meaning, and so much more. There are patient stories/breakthroughs as examples of concepts she’s presenting.

If you’re even slightly interested in this book - just read it. I’d also recommend On Our Best Behavior by Elise Loehnen.

"When you’re in an adaptive space, you allow what’s perfect for you to change because you know that the perfection is coming from inside of you. When you’re in a maladaptive space, you’re not connected to your wholeness (perfection), so you try to outsource perfection. Your world becomes superficially perfect while you’re miserable on the inside." (Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control)

Fascinating journey of a journalist trying to find the smoking gun of the crypto stablecoin Tether. He reveals a lot about the industry as a whole: crypto bros, NFTs, lost savings, scammers, and the real-world harms caused by crypto (evidently Tether is the money dispenser of choice for scammers in Cambodia who entrap then enslave people… if you get one of those “accidental” texts turned crypto-scam, it could be someone being held against their will). You also learn about a crypto-earning phone game that went viral in the Philippines and made money for people… for a while, many of whom lost their savings when it crashed.

Well-written, with quite a few satisfying turns of phrase. There’s a nagging feeling the narrative wasn’t tight enough, and I think that’s because he began with a friend bragging about money he’d made, while the author’s hunch was SCAM ALERT… and yet people are making money. He set it out to prove the hunch right. The collapse might have done that for him, except that it had little impact on the primary target of his investigation: Tether. So there isn’t any closure about what they’re actually doing. Time will tell, but I became invested in his search for transparency.

A good read for anyone curious/uninformed about crypto brotopia as it touches on so many different aspects of it.

Loved this and plan to collect them all. Complex character development, fascinating storylines, and gritty portrayal of life in 17th century Japan for a traveling samurai who happens to also be a rabbit. It feels like the storylines come before the drawings, and are supported by the framing. There’s some innuendo, and violence that’s at times disturbing but not gratuitous - I think this is fine for 10+ although I don’t really consider it a kid’s series.

For whatever reason, the first book begins with the 8th comic, so this isn’t the true beginning of the series. I don’t feel that negatively impacted the story in any way (starting with Saga Book 1). There’s an introduction to primary characters at the beginning, and a note referencing the original comic when they first appear.

I appreciated the more educational elements that cover some aspect of life at that time (kelp farming). There are also explanatory pages in this edition.

The 5 Second Rule is: when you think of something you need to do, count down from 5 then move. It could be explained in a long blog post or a short pamphlet. So, understandably, a lot of this book is ra ra coach empowerment hype and screenshots of social media testimonials sent to the author. That’s fine if you’re into that kind of thing, just not my preference.

The primary value of this book is in the author’s personal story about using this to kickstart serious changes. I do think it feels a bit like a panacea (using it to prevent worrying, for example, is essentially a sideways approach to the method of noting used in meditation, which, IMO, is much better suited for mental catastrophizing than counting backwards).

If you read anything vaguely scientific about habit loops you probably already know more than the cursory mention of the science behind the technique, so there isn’t much depth there.

TL;DR - If you’re a productivity nerd that’s fairly on top of things, you won’t get a lot out of this. But I don’t think that’s the audience; it feels like a book for people who are not the life optimizer types, but rather feeling stuck or depressed and need a simple “do this” to jolt them into self-confidence and set off a chain reaction.

I would not call this a “bombshell exposé.” The author felt very measured, if frustrated by a lack of transparency from Emily Weiss. If there was ever a true scandal at Glossier, this book didn’t cover it. There were certainly missteps, but you’ll learn nothing you didn’t already know from the ex-employee Instagram account in 2020. It's a book looking for a bombshell and finding mostly typical founder/startup dysfunction.

While it’s an interesting story, and Emily Weiss has obviously been very ambitious (and privileged) from her youth, I personally believe it’s making way too big of a deal of her selecting a new CEO at the end of the story. The book acknowledges that founders may not have the right skills to be ongoing leaders, while also seeming to think Emily Weiss somehow failed (the author’s personal hope) by not eternally being the CEO herself. If anything, this should be heralded as a sign she is, in fact, willing to make hard decisions, despite having the same wannabe tech company delusions as Adam Neumann of WeWork. Coming from the business world, this seemed like a very normal stepping stone decision, and the fact it seems to have felt like it wasn’t is itself a sign that the cult of founders is still a serious problem. Also, she’s still in leadership. As someone who considers a couple of Glossier products as mainstays in my daily routine, I WANT the company to be run by someone who understands operations, scale, and longevity in a practical, non-flighty way. Bringing in an experienced CEO is the right way to go.

It was difficult to follow a clear narrative arc in this book. There's history, it's well-written, and there's some excellent commentary on the detestable word "girlboss" and the double standard for women executives, but I'm not sure what the point of this book was, exactly. It originally started out as a book on the beauty industry and pivoted to became all about Glossier, and it definitely feels that way. Read it if you're a fan of Glossier, are interested in the vapidness of the fashion industry, want to see a high-level view of what creation and growing pains look like for a VC-backed DTC company, or want a decent look at their brilliant Instagram marketing and building a following around a brand (Glossier pioneered this concept in many ways). However, if you want more on women as founders (mostly in tech), read Brotopia, or if you want real founder drama go with Bad Blood.

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"Weiss started out as a starry-eyed innovator, a girl for whom nothing had ever gone wrong. She wasn’t a Rockefeller, exactly, but to most Americans she might as well have been. She was pretty, connected, thin, tall. She dripped with privilege. But she was also smart. And, crucially, she was willing to put in the work. She had a solid idea—Into the Gloss—that came at exactly the right time. That was all hers. But Weiss sometimes fell into an internalized misogynist trap of not taking credit for her ideas, as if Glossier were a craft project, a manifestation of her vision boards. That’s because luck plays a huge role in Weiss’s trajectory. And luck can be scary to discuss because it can’t be bought or controlled. You can only set up all the right conditions for it, which can involve a lot of hard work, though not always. People don’t like talking about luck the way they don’t like talking about privilege: because it makes it seem like they haven’t “earned” everything. But I don’t think it has to be a luck or hard work thing, but rather an and." (Marisa Meltzer, Glossy)

Just bad… don’t ruin the Bone series by reading this. The art is not that good (there‘s one panel in particular that I’m shocked wasn’t corrected). The typeface used is annoyingly hard to read, and the story is just… not good. Imagine being a fan who read the original Bone series, and with what you’ve gleaned there about Rose’s backstory you decide to make a prequel, except that you have no experience with storytelling. That’s what this feels like, and it dulls the brilliance of the original series and Rose in particular. Don’t waste your time with this one.

Be warned that this book is massive, but so good. For anyone wanting to understand the divisiveness of the current political climate, this is a must read. He does a good job of explaining how we use intellect to justify our preconceived notions, then lays out the moral framework those notions originate from.

For anyone reading certain other reviews, I felt he was respectful and fair throughout the book.

I've read a lot on the Enneagram Institute website, and other than different type descriptions, there's nothing new here. You can take a different (and in my opinion, more accurate) test online as well. The history/origin of the Enneagram, or more in-depth psychology observations would better lend itself to book format, but this is not it.

I much prefer (and highly recommend) The Road Back to You by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile.

3.5 stars.

I read a lot of similar books, so the first 3/4 of the book felt like a uninteresting recap of things I already know, citing studies I've already read. (If you read enough popular productivity/psychology stuff you learn everyone cites the same people).

However, the last several chapters had some good points, and the very last chapter strategies on coping with choice. 1/2 star for those.

If you're skeptical of his premise, go ahead and read this. If you already have a grip on our society's curse of decision fatigue and want a book in this realm, I'd suggest Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman, or for a less clinical and more practical option, Decisive by Chip & Dan Heath.

Part memoir, part writing advice, part storytelling about recovery from being hit by a van (!) A great read, and I loved how down to earth he is. I was pleasantly surprised by his view that stories sort of tell themselves - you're discovering them as you go and sharing them with the world. Reminded me a little of the ideas in Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. His writing advice was more general/applicable to fiction for obvious reasons. If you want specific pointers pick up the Elements of Style.

For the record, I've never read, nor do I intend to read any of his books. Not my thing. But the man is a household name for a reason and I enjoyed reading about how he got to where he is. It's in the same vein as Scott Adam's How to Fail book - an average guy who works really hard to get really awesome at what he does and finds success. If you hear enough stories like this you'll begin to understand what is meant when people say “you make your own luck.”

Highly recommended for every parent. Fairly short overall, bullet point strategies throughout all chapters and a chart in the back for those techniques at different ages. Includes illustrations you can use to explain concepts to your kids. Buy it - you'll want to refer to it often, particularly during the younger years.

I preferred this over No Drama Discipline, which seemed to be a long fluffy version of this.

I'm surprised by the low rating on GoodReads, as I think the plan/strategy is solid. My guess is it's because of the self-helpiness of the whole thing. When you read mostly in the productivity space, you've heard all the meta stuff before.

I would have preferred purely a how-to guide that was half the length and skipped the motivational stuff. There isn't much to the plan itself, but it is about the execution. Time will tell as to how it works for me, but I recognize the value in it because I generally do vision/system stuff at the beginning of the year, but the full year is too long. For that reason alone I'm going to try 12 week cycles because it makes more sense. Not revolutionary, and you don't need the book to do that, but if you've never done similar vision, goal setting activities this would be a good place to start.

Super quick read (less than an hour).

The book is actually a fictional story about a mentoring relationship they break down into bullet points. Think E-Myth story but with 0.00136% of the pontificating. A little cheesy but an effective way of communicating their MENTOR principles while remaining engaging.

Worth reading for as short as it is. I've had more time wasted by unnecessary phone calls.

I found the story portion of the book (Part 1) much more engaging than Part 2. As is often the case, I think the value lies in seeing his personal journey and how he worked through things.

Part 2 was interesting for seeing where he landed at the time of publishing. Those ideas weren't new (or shocking) to me, but I felt they were starting to bleed into the realm of faith. Personally, I don't think you can explain and have an answer for everything, but that really doesn't bother me. I'm probably lower on some theoretical level of unknowability discomfort. I actually think this is just what you get when a science nerd is an Enneagram 9.

Getting to the foundation of things is super important, and it was interesting to see his process/axioms, which I could see being incredibly helpful for people who relate to his journey.

This book is worth reading simply to make you think about the implications of common phrases you'd never otherwise think about. It's particularly relevant for parents, obviously, but as most people interact with children on some level it's on my books everyone should read list. The chapter “Behave Yourself” is the best.

It's less important that you agree with everything she puts forward, and more about making an informed decision on how you are choosing to parent your child and updating your language accordingly. It's amazing how universal (in the US) things like forced sharing and apologies are without a second thought as to whether they're even beneficial at all.