Books
I try to adhere to this scoring system.
The books #life-changing had a profound impact on my life or beliefs.
I don’t finish all the books. I doesn’t mean I won’t return to them in the future.
I highly recommend all my #favourite books.
A Jimmy šel za duhou
I thought I’d read the book at high school but was probably mistaken since I didn’t remember a thing while listening to the audio version in 2023.
Burning the Books
a history of burning and destroying the written knowledge
Walden
thoughts of a guy in the middle of USA in the middle of 19th century
Data and Reality
the book title says it succinctly
Foundation and Earth
the last book from the Foundation series
Foundation's Edge
the search for the Earth or Gaia, 500 years after Harry Seldon
Silmarillion
a collection of myths and stories from the world of The Lord of the Rings
The Second Foundation
Mule’s search for the second foundation.
Foundation and Empire
The fall of the first foundation. Mule’s quest.
Foundation
The first book in the Foundation series.
The Courage to Be Disliked
A dialogue of a philosopher and a young man about life; presenting mostly Adlerian life philosophy
Prelude to Foundation
Harry Seldon on the run with help of Doors.
Artemis
A crimi-thriller novel from the author of Martian
Proces
Zoufalství ve střetu s bezhlavou mašinérií
Superintelligence
How shall we survive in the world where we are not the most intelligent species?
Jací jsme dnes
Vzpomínky investigativního novináře Respektu
A Brief Candle in the Dark
Dawkins’ autobiography, the second part. Up to his 70th birthday
An Appetite for Wonder
Dawkins’ autobiography, the first part, up to the Selfish Gene publication
Your Music and People
How you should promote yourself and your music creatively
Sedm zákonů
Pohled na zrod, vzestup a pád civilizací z výšky. Směs Diamonda, Harariho, Roslinga, …
How To
Another funny book from the author of XKCD comics.
Jak se dělá imunita
Stručný přehled o fungování imunity
Superforecasting
How to be better at forecasting. How to overcome our biases.
Project Hail Mary
A highschool teacher on a suicide mission to save the humanity
Thinking in Bets
A poker player teaches us how to decide under uncertainty
Starship Troopers
A story about a young man who became a soldier accidentally, then became a lieutenant. All while fighting bugs in our galaxy.
Gump
Pěkný příběh. Číšila z toho láska k psům a zvířatům.
How to Avoid Climatic Disaster
An overview of challenges on the way to carbon-neutral future by Bill Gates
Freakonomics
An original take on many topics
Quiet
Our world needs introverts. Being introvert is normal.
The Rational Optimist
The best time to live is now. And it will be even better.
Numbers don't lie
Interesting number facts about the world, a bit like Factfulness.
Snow Crash
A sci-fi novel coining terms as Metaverse and Avatar
The Martian
A survivor’s journal on Mars
Stalker
A well known philosophical sci-fi novel
I, robot
An anthology of Asimov’s great stories about robots, artificial intelligence etc.
How to live
One of a few authors who writes about ideas without any unnecessary words
Give and Take
Givers, takers and matchers. Givers are the most and least successful of all. I had to stop listening to this.
The Five Elements of Effective Thinking
Five steps toward a better thinking.
Hell Yes or No
A brief but dense book full of wit, clever questions, ideas and thought food. Derek is compressing many self-help and life-hack books and it is
Solaris
A unique planet orbiting two suns is explored by scientists who are completely clueless. The planet creates persons from the scientists’ hidden memories but they fail to communicate and comprehend the planet.
Surfaces and Essences
Another book from my favourite author Hofstadter.
Heroes
Fry is doing a great job of retelling the ancient well-known stories. As good as his previous book.
War of Art
How to overcome the resistance to do anything important and to achieve your goals.
How not to Die
A scientific approach for choosing what to eat. It turns out you should eat plant-based, non-processed, whole food.
Beginning of Infinity
A scientific and optimistic view of our future. A really captivating book.
Can't Hurt Me
Almost unbelievable life story of David Goggins who probably lacks self-preservation instinct. Too extreme to be a true self-help book, but there are some truths in what he is telling (preaching).
How to Win Friends and Influence People
One of the oldest self-help books. I am not the intended audience. I couldn’t follow his rules and being true to myself, authentic and consistent.
From Bacteria to Bach and Back
Dennett’s latest attempt at explaining our mind and its evolution.
When Things Fall Apart
A soothing voice will tell you how to cope with problems in your life, but not how to solve them.
Think and Grow Rich
Self-help book from 1937. After reading so many self-help book before this one, I realized it gets boring…
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
A self-help novel, full of great wisdoms packed into a bit weird story.
Calling Bullshit
How to spot bullshit and what to do after that. Funny and important book.
Sum
40 short stories with a twist at the end from a very imaginative neuroscientist.
Slepé skvrny
Palčivé problémy Česka v podání předního sociologa, který neváhá kritizovat levici i pravici.
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
What can modern DNA analysis tell us about our ancestors? A lot actually.
Cosmos
Sagan is one of the most prominent popular science author and this book was even turned into a series.
How Innovation Works
Innovation is a long, messy and complex process. The contributions of single scientics and inventors is overstated.
Putin's People
How Putin raised his power, gained control of whole industries, banks, companies and ruled Russia with the help of KGB and FSB. Not overwhelmingly pleasant to read.
Social Engineering
Learn some actionable practices to hack human brain of other people and exploit it’s attributes and weaknesses.
The Code Book
The history of cryptography from the acknowledged popular science (maths) book author.
The Evolution of Everything
If you push enough, everything can be explained with evolution theory.
The Missionary Position
Mother Teresa’s morals and believes clearly belong to the past.
The Science Book
A brief history of natural sciences. Heavily biased towards physics and chemistry.
Thirty Million Words
Encourage your child’s ability to self-regulate
Můj Janáček
Kunderův příspěvek k Janáčkově odkazu
Outgrowing God
Another briliant book from the great Dawkins. You love him or you hate him. I love him.
Conscious
A hard topic to write about. I expected a bit more since Sam Harris (her husband) and some other notable authors and scientists have recommended the book.
Genius
A biography of Richard Feynman. Nothing memorable.
How to Create a Mind
Hard to tell if the book is really so bad by the blink but I was expecting little more from such an author.
How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds
This books comes with a classification of people into three groups: visual, tonal and motoric, which seems quite plausible and useful.
The Great Mental Models II
Comparatively worse than the first book (blink)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
I should probably read the whole book, this blink certainly was interesting!
The Language Insinct
He is a great author, but personally, he gets natural language completely wrong.
This is Your Brain on Music
I’ve read Sack’s Musicophilia and it was much better.
Antifragile
Taleb introduces another great term—antifragility—which can be found in many areas. And which can be consciously improved. It’s more than robustness.
The Parasitic Mind
Bit misleading title for the book full of angry arguments against overly liberal policies mainly in USA. I stopped listening to the audio version of the book circa in the middle.
Lifespan
There is a slight chance that our generation can live to 100 years with a good health. There is also a non-negligible chance that we won’t die.
Edison
Bylo tu však něco krásného co drtí odvaha a radost z života i smrti…
The Great Mental Models I
Probably the best (and funniest) was Hanlon’s razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Algorithms to Live By
Well known algorithms. Nothing extraordinary.
Life 3.0
Refreshingly interesting although it sometimes feels like blog entries or a diary of an extremely intelligent scientist
Making the Modern World
Hard to assess properly from blink, but Bill Gates recommends this author repeatedly so I should probably read something unabridged from him in the future.
The Book of Why
Not very engaging but definitely important topic of correlation, causation, statistics and AI.
How to Lie with Statistics
Maybe blinkist is summarizing the books badly as I tend to score the books from Blinkist quite low.
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Learning at work is win-win: you earn money and at the same time learn new things so invest into yourself. Buy assets, not liabilities. Invest as soon as possible.
Mindset
Fixed vs growth mindset. The former is limiting you, the latter will help ou to improve yourself quickly.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
The third book from Harari, probably the weakest of the three, but still a fun to read.
Boj o první místo
Jedna z nejslabších knih od Foglara
Chvály Zadní země
Méně známá knížečka od libereckého poutníka Míly Nevrlého.
Čtyři po půlnoci
Obsahuje dvě povídky – Časožrouti a Skryté okno do skryté zahrady.
Dějiny
Půjčil jsem si od Dana Kropáčka, nebo na jeho doporučení jsem přečetl.
Den Trifidů
A lot of material for thinking about our society and psychology
Dobrodružství v zemi nikoho
Dobrodružný příběh o stavbě srubu na tajném a úžasném místě
Dva divoši
Krásné dobrodružství kluků v přírodě až příliš krutě uťaté realitou tehdejšího života.
Džungle před tabulí
Příběh o učiteli v New Yorku
Enlightenment now
Velmi dlouhý argument o tom, proč je věda, vzdělání dobrá.
Everything is Fucked
His previous book was much better, but this one is better compared to other self-help books I have read.
God is not great
Hitchens has much more arguments against religions than other prominentatheist writers (e.g. Dawkins with his God’s delusion) and this book seemed more compelling.
Hobit, aneb cesta tam a zase zpátky
Must read
Hoši od Bobří řeky
Kronika pražské Dvojky
Hospodské povídky
Jednu knížku z Koubkových povídek jsem četl později než ty dvě další…
J. S. Bach
Encyklopedicky uspořádaná biografie J. S. Bacha
Jáma a kyvadlo
Soubor povídek
Jeden den Ivana Děnisoviče
Popis jednoho obyčejného dne v gulagu na Sibiři v 50. letech 20. století
Karí povídky
Četl jsem myslím cestou z Prahy od Barnáše, který mi je půjčil. Ve vlaku jsem přečetl obě i Vesnické povídky.
Karpatské hry
a book which beautifully describes the magic of wandering in the wild mountains (of Romania)
Kdo chytá v žitě
Povinná četba na střední. Typický příklad knihy, kterou jsem četl dřív, než jsem měl. Tipuji, že kdybych ji četl teď, hodnotil bych ji lépe.
Logicomix
I read it in Czech as my neighbour borrowed me the book.
Mozart – člověk a génius
Životopis W. A. Mozarta
Mozart – Stopy transcendence
Myslím, že mi to půjčil pan prof. Hanuš.
Mozartova cesta do Prahy
Kdysi jsem si to půjčil z adamovské knihovny.
Mythos
It was so good, that I bought it in Czech for my grandma. She loved it and now it circulates in our family.
Navzdory básník zpívá
Četba této knížky mi zařídila 1 z maturity z češtiny, protože jsem si vytáhl téma renesance.
Outliers
Malcolm is a good storyteller but I don’t enjoy his books very much.
Příběhy Sherlocka Holmese
Klasika.
Rationality
Ramblings on rationality, biases, false believes, artificial intelligence, …
Sbohem, můj krásný plameni
Velmi napínavé, mírně nepřesné, ale čtivé a zábavné.
Setkání s Rámou
Hard sci-fi. Classic.
Sni svůj bláhový sen
Nevím o čem to bylo, ale bylo to dobrý.
Stínadla se bouří
Druhý díl stínadelské trilogie
Tajemství Velkého Vonta
Třetí díl stínadelské trilogie
Talking to strangers
Just several anecdotal stories about how people can’t really understand and predict each other
The Better Angels of Our Nature
A clever argument in favour of optimism.
The Dark Forest
The second part of the trilogy.
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The second part of the trilogy.
The Grapes of Wrath
Asi bych musel být Američan, aby mě ta kniha bavila.
The Lord of the Rings
Must read
The Return of the King
Must read.
The Running Man
Sci-fi od krále hororu
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read; own your life
Three-body problem
I enjoyed it almost as books from A. C. Clarke and other titans of sci-fi.
Trnová dívka
Tuto knihu jsem pravděpodobně vůbec nepochopil, možná jsem ji četl příliš brzy.
Ubik
Přečteno na doporučení Vojty Hanuše. Klasika sci-fi žánru.
Vesnické povídky
Útlá knížečka od českého písničkáře. Vtipné povídky.
Vraždy v ulici Morgue
Výběr povídek od Poea. Klasika!
Všichni lidé bratry jsou
Moje první Simmelovka, na doporučení taťky.
Why we sleep
Walker is exaggerating to emphasize his point, but there is a lot of interesting facts.
Z čeho jsou utkány sny
The title is taken from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
Záhada hlavolamu
Rychlé šípy ve Stínadlech
Zázračný úklid
If you are a hoarder, you need to read this. If you have too many things in your house, you should read this. If you are a minimalist, skip it.
Mým marodům
Spousta zajímavých myšlenek, ale je potřeba autora brát s rezervou. Což je tedy potřeba asi vždy a všude.
Deep Work
It was not so eye-opening, probably because I’ve read a bunch of similar books before this one—I liked Essentialism much more.
The Death's End
It. Was. Grand. I consider it to be almost on a par with A. C. Clarke’s work. We started to the Czech audioversion on 2022-07-09.
The Three-Body Problem
The first fiction book after a while and it was worth it. I want more!
Digital Minimalism
Read Essentialism instead.
Essentialism
One of the best self-help book I’ve read.
The 4-Hour Workweek
Stop working and fully enjoy your life! Easy, isn’t it?
It Starts With Food
Whole30 diet, not very good for vegans and vegetarians
Homo Deus
If you consider yourself an intellectual, you should read this since all people considering themselves as intellectuals probably have read this book as well, myself included.
Sapiens
An instant favourite. What a thinker this Harari!
The Power of Habit
Understand how habits are made and broken and change your life!
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Funny. So famous that you need to read it.
The Laws of Simplicity
The topic of simplicity is really complex.
The Moral Landscape
An attempt at formalizing or defining morality. That’s a hard task, but Harris doesn’t fail completely.
The Gene
Not so good as his previous book about cancer.
Economix
Great non-fiction comix. I want more of these!
Science in the Soul
Richard Dawkins selected short writings
Factfulness
people are quite bad in estimating how world is improving
The End of Faith
Another attempt at attacking religion from one of Four Horsemen.
The Formation of Vegetable Mould
The last book of Darwin which perfectly shows how rigorous he was and that he was such a talent for discovering of long-term phenomena.
Thing Explainer
You can’t make a mistake with anything from Randall Munroe if you like science and engineering. He is brilliant.
I Contain Multitudes
It felt to me like a very long blog entry or a longish article on web rather than a science popular book.
Open Access
A good overview of the issue with publishing science
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Hard to read. Both history and acquaintance made me doubt that practitioners of the natural sciences possess firmer or more permanent answers to such questions than their colleagues in social science.
Metamagical Themas
An anthology of Hofstadter’s articles in Scientific American
A Short History of Nearly Everything
A good non-fiction audiobook if you are cooking or cleaning your room.
Chaos
An overview of a completely new scientific field
The Demon-Haunted World
A great book by a great scholar. I expected more science and less politics, but still, great reading.
Guns, germs, and steel
Goodreads review: I agree with the opinion in the book and I like the whole idea but the arguments could have been much shorter and denser.
The Ancestor's Tale
Goodreads review: Another great book from Dawkins. I would love to have like 100 more pictures to illustrate the living or extinct animals.
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Probably the hardest book I’ve ever read. If you want to get the overall idea, read I am a strange loop instead.
What If?
What If is an instant favourite for me. Funny, full of interesting stuff.
On Intelligence
This book had an impact on me while working on my PhD thesis as it resonated with my view of artificial (machine) intelligence.
Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing
Sometimes it felt a bit out-dated but the explanations of various algorithms and principles was very good and understanable.
Consciousness Explained
The quasivisual nature of the phenomenology of comprehension has been almost entirely ignored by researchers in cognitive science, particularly in Artificial Intelligence, who have attempted to create language-understanding computer systems.
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the ser ious scientifi c workers are the only profoundly religious people.
Labyrinths
“Why take five hundred pages,” he asks, “to develop an idea whose oral demonstration fits into a few minutes?” (Thursday, June 19, 2014, 07:14 PM, page 155)
The Red Queen
Doporučení od Honzy Michelfeita. Goodreads review: Packed with new information, many examples, clever ideas - it was delight to read each day on my way to work.
Language Myths
A set of short articles about language myths. Some great, some weak, but good overall.
The Extended Phenotype
The book was quite hard to follow since it is very academical and if you are not acquainted with biology and genetics I think it will be hard to follow for you too.
Musicophilia
It is clear from this book that music and its perception is very deeply engraved into our brain.
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
This is a must-read for all students. The style is not very entertaining but there are only a few such impactful book in the world.
The Paradox of Choice
If I read this book before all those Arielys, Kahnemans, then it would be much more interesting and mind-boggling.
Bad Science
An overview of the problems with the current state of science and its methods and procedures
I Am a Strange Loop
an epilogue to GEB
The Da Vinci Code
My first book read in English and while travelling.
The Emperor of All Maladies
Cancer seems to be an inevitable part of our biology
Reč těla
Learn to manage your body expressions to help you persuade, empathize, soothe, … others
Ani sami bohové
Dates probably wrong.
Nahé slunce
Už jako kluk jsem však nedokázal uvěřit, že by poznání mohlo být nebezpečné, že řešením je nevědomost. Mně se vždy zdálo, že řešením je vědění.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
clever and courageous; it strongly supports my convinction that we are just a bit better than apes
The Greatest Show on Earth
Bertrand Russell said, ‘We may all have come into existence five minutes ago, provided with ready-made memories, with holes in our socks and hair that needed cutting.
Ocelové jeskyně
Další výborná kniha od Asimova.
A Brief History Of Time
the most commonly unfinished book of all times–hard to digest but a real treat for a curious mind
Malý princ
Everytime you read it I learn something new.
The God Delusion
Dawkins’ attack on the religion. This probably won’t make you an apostate but I liked it a lot as many other Dawkins’ books.
A Dance with Dragons
After having read all 6 books I decided to read only non-fiction in the future. I broke this rule only a few years later with Three-body problem.
Desatero domácí ekologie
Rady a tipy pro domácnosti. Některé rozumné, některé přehnané, ale žádné zbytečné.
A Feast for Crows
4th book from Martin’s epos.
A Clash of Kings
Překladatelské perličky Navzdory neutuchajícím hádkám mezi jejím otcem a jeho bratrem, kterého kdysi vyvlastnil, panovalo hluboké pouto. (Friday, November 02, 2012, 05:38 PM, page 1759-60)
I Am Legend
A fiction book about last surviror on Earth, fighting zombies. Classic.
Jak drahá je intuice
Third book from Dan Ariely. A bit less entertaining but still very informative.
A Game of Thrones
1st book of Martin’s epos.
Pavučina lží
26. ledna jsem rozečetl knihu od Dana Browna. Šifru mistra Leonarda jsem viděl, Andělé a démony také. Dočetl jsem ji s Barunkou 2.
The Black Swan
My first book from Taleb and an instant favourite
Jak drahé je zdarma
Anchors, framing, prospect theory and much more
The Selfish Gene
This book has changed my life. often the most important contribution a scientist can make is to discover a new way of seeing old theories or facts.
Slova a pravidla
Knížka od Pinkera. Přestal jsem ji číst, protože nesouhlasím s teorií, kterou tam Pinker popisuje. Obsahuje spoustu pěkných příkladů, ale jejich interpretace mě rozčilovala, tak jsem ji asi v půlce odložil.
Umění překladu
Hlavní dílo českého teoretika překladu
451 stupňů Fahrenheita
The second best-known novel from Bradbury
Literární poklesky
Fakt nechápu, jak to mohl překladatel zvládnout přeložit.
Metafory paměti
A history of metaphors of memory, how they changed with technology and how they related to understanding of our minds.
Introduction to Algorithms
Nevím, jestli jsem to dočetl.
Hordubal
Novela z Čapkovy noetické trilogie o vraždě Juraje, který se vrací po letech z Ameriky do Podparpatské Rusi
Toulavý autobus
Novela z roku 1947 o jízdě autobusem v Kalifornii
Divím se, že jsem tak veselý
První Simmelův román, true story o lidech zasypaných ve sklepě, kteří v sebeobraně zabijí chemika, který chce vyhodit zával do povětří.
Jak chutná moc
Podobnost hrdiny s postavou prezidenta A. Novotného je čistě náhodná!
Větrné toulání
Výběr krátkých povídek a příběhů od Míly Nevrlého
U řeky Piedra jsem sedla a plakala
Milostný příběh, který mne vůbec neoslovil.
Glenn Gould—Music and Mind
A biography of the extravagant and famous pianist
Liška Bystrouška
Vtipný příběh o trampotách jedné příliš chytré lišky
Smrt si říká Engelchen
Autobiografický román točící se kolem Ploštiny a partyzánů na konci 2. světové války
The Joy of Music
A must-read for classical music listeners.
Nejkrásnější sbírka
Nádnerná a poetická knížka. Nejlépe čtená u ohně v rumunských horách.
Velká Fermatova věta
One of my first popular science (math) book.
Marťanská kronika
Must read.
Petr a Lucie
Útlá knížečka se smutným koncem
1984
Klasika, která nepohladí.
Báječná léta s Klausem
Pokus o navázání na úspěch Báječných let pod psa
Nechte prosím kytky žít
Nevím o čem to bylo, ale bylo to dobrý.
The Old Man and the Sea
I probably need to re-read this as it was boring as fuck when I read this at high school.
The Two Towers
Druhý díl Tolkienovy ságy
Bídníci
Klasický román z francouzského prostředí
Vladař
Mildly interesting
Svůj kalich hořkosti
Už si nepamatuju o čem to bylo, ale všechny romány od Simmela byly děsně čtivý.
Noční práce
Na doporučení Vojty Hanuše, vůbec mě to nebavilo.
Věc Makropulos
Román o nesmrtelnosti
S láskou k vlastni nejdál dojdeš
Nevím o čem to bylo, ale bylo to dobrý.
Zpráva o třetí planetě
An anthology of Clarke’s short stories. Great read!
Válka s mloky
Další Čapkova trefná metafora
Bílá nemoc
Klasika.
Krakatit
Čapkova další trefná metafora
Nemova říše
Česká sci-fi klasika.
Neviditelná armáda
Česká sci-fi klasika.
Rozkazy z éteru
Česká sci-fi klasika
Zápas s nebem
Česká sci-fi klasika.
J. S. Bach
Knížka, kterou jsem si opakovaně půjčoval z adamovské knihovny. Byl jsem snad jediný.
Dášeňka, čili život štěněte
Česká klasika
Pejsek a kočička
Klasika.
Přístav volá
Jirka Dražan, Modrý život, Přístavní čtvrť, …