Note-Taking Style
Someone who shares information is always treading murky legal water. So to clarify about my writing style:
- All notes with quotation marks around them are direct quotes from the book. That is, I am not the original author, I am merely citing their work.
- If there is no page number cited for a quote, refer to the page number of the previous quote. If there is no page number for the previous quote, then I must have taken the notes from the audiobook, oh well.
- All notes without quotation marks are paraphrases from the book; I wrote them, but they are based on ideas found in the book.
- Unless stated otherwise, all content found in non-note-related posts are my original work.
It is also important to reiterate that these are my notes.The reason I wrote them down in the first place was because I found them personally useful. So although this website is a great resource for broadening your range of worldly knowledge, my notes are not a substitute for reading the actual books firsthand.
For instance, sometimes I’ll write a note that will have little obvious meaning to someone who hasn’t read the book, but has immense meaning to me because I read the book and understand the greater context behind it, an example being a note like:
“It is not enough to accept dissent, sometimes you must demand dissent.” -Adapt, Tim Harford
This note fails to acknowledge WHY dissent must be demanded. In Adapt, Tim Harford explains how even in companies that welcome dissenting opinions, people will still not offer them if it would be against their overall incentives (workplace popularity, etc.) Therefore the only way to ensure that one’s ideas face the necessary scrutiny is to demand dissent. This point is not immediately obvious to someone who only read my notes.
Finally, if you are wondering which of the books featured on this blog are worth reading, the answer is “all of them.”
My rule is that if I am going to take the time to post my notes of a book on this website, it has to be an outstanding book. Therefore, when you do see a book featured on here, I am implicitly giving that book my highest recommendation. At least at the time that I post it. I no longer recommend “The Assault on Reason” by Al Gore or “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle (has some good points about how to be more mindful but I strongly disagree with his epistemological conclusions).
