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Marcus K.

mkaz@sfba.club

Joined 3 weeks, 4 days ago

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2024 Reading Goal

83% complete! Marcus K. has read 25 of 30 books.

Review of 'Six Thousand Years of Bread : Its Holy and Unholy History.' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This was not quite the book I was looking for, the book's focus is more on history than bread. There isn't a cohesive flow between all the pieces of history highlighted. Grain and bread is loosely the connecting piece but feels like it is missing a general idea for the book besides times in history bread and grain are mentioned.

I'm tempted to give it 3 stars because there is interesting information about different regions of the world and their different types of grain. Plus the later chapters on bread's role in WWI and WWII is put together better, I think since its from the author's own time. However, I found myself skimming large sections of the book, it is tough to rate that high.

A better book about a commodity through history is Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlanksky. I think this is what I was looking for …

Daniel Coyle: The culture code (2018, Bantam Books) 4 stars

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Talent Code comes a book that …

Review of 'The culture code' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A good read, I would recommend it. Culture Code offers a different view on what is truly important for forming successful teams. The key qualities of trust, safety, belonging, and communication are more important than most other factors usually attributed to successful teams.

Kursat Ozenc, Margaret Hagan: Rituals for Work (Paperback, Wiley) 5 stars

Review of 'Rituals for Work' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A great book about rituals and traditions at work. The book explains why rituals are important to shaping a team's effectiveness, a company's culture, and how they can be used to contribute to individual creativity and productivity.

The majority of the book is divided into 5 main areas (Creativity, Performance, Conflict, Community, and Transition) and provides 10 example rituals to try to tackle specific issues or improvements. My company is fully distributed so the rituals can't always be translate 1:1 but the gist is the more important aspect spur your thinking about what you can do similar.

I recommend getting the physical book because there are a lot of drawings and graphics which may not translate well to a digital version.

Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch (Hardcover, 2013, Little Brown and Company) 3 stars

Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present …

Review of 'The Goldfinch' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars


A good story, but drags and is tedious in some parts; it dives far to deep in details of minor points but then skips over major chunks of the plot, to be back filled with a summary. The story and life of Theo is interesting and enjoyed reading about it, it just could've used editing down to 400 pages instead of almost 800.

Ray Dalio: Principles (2017, Simon & Schuster) 3 stars

xviii, 567 pages : 24 cm

Review of 'Principles' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

The ideas and content in the book are really solid. There are plenty of great quotes and aphorisms to extract from the book. I will probably use it as a reference of sorts, however, as a book I found it hard to engage with the material. It was just a little too preachy and self-help and repetitive. The book is like a string of Medium posts each around a principal, good in small doses but not necessarily a cohesive story or book.

On the author's own recommendation, I did skip the auto biography at the front.

Here are a couple of examples of principals:

> Don’t confuse what you wish were true with what is really true.

> Don’t worry about looking good—worry instead about achieving your goals.

> Don’t let pain stand in the way

> Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone else