The books with tag #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 books tagged #favourite.
Scores: 0–25% I don’t recommend it; 25–50% an average book; 50–75% an above-average enjoyable book; 75–100% an awesome book.
an award winning sci-fi novel from 1966
the second book in the Dune series
how to be a better programmer (or a more senior one)
award winning sci-fi saga
reducing complexity of software, from the author of Tcl
a history of quantitative trading
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.
a history of burning and destroying the written knowledge
thoughts of a guy in the middle of USA in the middle of 19th century
the book title says it succinctly
the last book from the Foundation series
the search for the Earth or Gaia, 500 years after Harry Seldon
a collection of myths and stories from the world of The Lord of the Rings
Mule’s search for the second foundation.
The fall of the first foundation. Mule’s quest.
The first book in the Foundation series.
A dialogue of a philosopher and a young man about life; presenting mostly Adlerian life philosophy
Harry Seldon on the run with help of Doors.
A crimi-thriller novel from the author of Martian
Zoufalství ve střetu s bezhlavou mašinérií
How shall we survive in the world where we are not the most intelligent species?
Vzpomínky investigativního novináře Respektu
Dawkins’ autobiography, the second part. Up to his 70th birthday
Dawkins’ autobiography, the first part, up to the Selfish Gene publication
How you should promote yourself and your music creatively
Pohled na zrod, vzestup a pád civilizací z výšky. Směs Diamonda, Harariho, Roslinga, …
Another funny book from the author of XKCD comics.
stručný přehled o fungování imunity
How to be better at forecasting. How to overcome our biases.
A highschool teacher on a suicide mission to save the humanity
A poker player teaches us how to decide under uncertainty
A story about a young man who became a soldier accidentally, then became a lieutenant. All while fighting bugs in our galaxy.
Pěkný příběh. Číšila z toho láska k psům a zvířatům.
An overview of challenges on the way to carbon-neutral future by Bill Gates
An original take on many topics
Our world needs introverts. Being introvert is normal.
The best time to live is now. And it will be even better.
Interesting number facts about the world, a bit like Factfulness.
A sci-fi novel coining terms as Metaverse and Avatar
A survivor’s journal on Mars
A well known philosophical sci-fi novel
An anthology of Asimov’s great stories about robots, artificial intelligence etc.
One of a few authors who writes about ideas without any unnecessary words
Givers, takers and matchers. Givers are the most and least successful of all. I had to stop listening to this.
Five steps toward a better thinking.
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
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.
Fry is doing a great job of retelling the ancient well-known stories. As good as his previous book.
How to overcome the resistance to do anything important and to achieve your goals.
A scientific approach for choosing what to eat. It turns out you should eat plant-based, non-processed, whole food.
A scientific and optimistic view of our future. A really captivating book.
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).
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.
Dennett’s latest attempt at explaining our mind and its evolution.
A soothing voice will tell you how to cope with problems in your life, but not how to solve them.
Self-help book from 1937. After reading so many self-help book before this one, I realized it gets boring…
A self-help novel, full of great wisdoms packed into a bit weird story.
How to spot bullshit and what to do after that. Funny and important book.
40 short stories with a twist at the end from a very imaginative neuroscientist.
Palčivé problémy Česka v podání předního sociologa, který neváhá kritizovat levici i pravici.
What can modern DNA analysis tell us about our ancestors? A lot actually.
Sagan is one of the most prominent popular science author and this book was even turned into a series.
Innovation is a long, messy and complex process. The contributions of single scientics and inventors is overstated.
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.
Learn some actionable practices to hack human brain of other people and exploit it’s attributes and weaknesses.
The history of cryptography from the acknowledged popular science (maths) book author.
If you push enough, everything can be explained with evolution theory.
Mother Teresa’s morals and believes clearly belong to the past.
A brief history of natural sciences. Heavily biased towards physics and chemistry.
Encourage your child’s ability to self-regulate
Kunderův příspěvek k Janáčkově odkazu
Another briliant book from the great Dawkins. You love him or you hate him. I love him.
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.
A biography of Richard Feynman. Nothing memorable.
Hard to tell if the book is really so bad by the blink but I was expecting little more from such an author.
This books comes with a classification of people into three groups: visual, tonal and motoric, which seems quite plausible and useful.
Comparatively worse than the first book (blink)
I should probably read the whole book, this blink certainly was interesting!
He is a great author, but personally, he gets natural language completely wrong.
I’ve read Sack’s Musicophilia and it was much better.
Taleb introduces another great term—antifragility—which can be found in many areas. And which can be consciously improved. It’s more than robustness.
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.
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.
Bylo tu však něco krásného co drtí odvaha a radost z života i smrti…
Probably the best (and funniest) was Hanlon’s razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Well known algorithms. Nothing extraordinary.
Refreshingly interesting although it sometimes feels like blog entries or a diary of an extremely intelligent scientist
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.
Not very engaging but definitely important topic of correlation, causation, statistics and AI.
Maybe blinkist is summarizing the books badly as I tend to score the books from Blinkist quite low.
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.
Fixed vs growth mindset. The former is limiting you, the latter will help ou to improve yourself quickly.
The third book from Harari, probably the weakest of the three, but still a fun to read.
Jedna z nejslabších knih od Foglara
Méně známá knížečka od libereckého poutníka Míly Nevrlého.
Obsahuje dvě povídky – Časožrouti a Skryté okno do skryté zahrady.
Půjčil jsem si od Dana Kropáčka, nebo na jeho doporučení jsem přečetl.
A lot of material for thinking about our society and psychology
Dobrodružný příběh o stavbě srubu na tajném a úžasném místě
Krásné dobrodružství kluků v přírodě až příliš krutě uťaté realitou tehdejšího života.
Příběh o učiteli v New Yorku
Velmi dlouhý argument o tom, proč je věda, vzdělání dobrá.
His previous book was much better, but this one is better compared to other self-help books I have read.
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.
Kronika pražské Dvojky
Jednu knížku z Koubkových povídek jsem četl později než ty dvě další…
Encyklopedicky uspořádaná biografie J. S. Bacha
Soubor povídek
Popis jednoho obyčejného dne v gulagu na Sibiři v 50. letech 20. století
Četl jsem myslím cestou z Prahy od Barnáše, který mi je půjčil. Ve vlaku jsem přečetl obě i Vesnické povídky.
a book which beautifully describes the magic of wandering in the wild mountains (of Romania)
Povinná četba na střední. Typický příklad knihy, kterou jsem četl dřív, než jsem měl. Tipuji, že kdybych ji četl teď, hodnotil bych ji lépe.
I read it in Czech as my neighbour borrowed me the book.
životopis W. A. Mozarta
Myslím, že mi to půjčil pan prof. Hanuš.
Kdysi jsem si to půjčil z adamovské knihovny.
It was so good, that I bought it in Czech for my grandma. She loved it and now it circulates in our family.
Četba této knížky mi zařídila 1 z maturity z češtiny, protože jsem si vytáhl téma renesance.
Malcolm is a good storyteller but I don’t enjoy his books very much.
Klasika.
Ramblings on rationality, biases, false believes, artificial intelligence, …
Velmi napínavé, mírně nepřesné, ale čtivé a zábavné.
Hard sci-fi. Classic.
Nevím o čem to bylo, ale bylo to dobrý.
Druhý díl stínadelské trilogie
Třetí díl stínadelské trilogie
Just several anecdotal stories about how people can’t really understand and predict each other
A clever argument in favour of optimism.
The second part of the trilogy.
The second part of the trilogy.
Asi bych musel být Američan, aby mě ta kniha bavila.
Must read
Must read.
Sci-fi od krále hororu
one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read; own your life
I enjoyed it almost as books from A. C. Clarke and other titans of sci-fi.
Tuto knihu jsem pravděpodobně vůbec nepochopil, možná jsem ji četl příliš brzy.
Přečteno na doporučení Vojty Hanuše. Klasika sci-fi žánru.
Útlá knížečka od českého písničkáře. Vtipné povídky.
Výběr povídek od Poea. Klasika!
Moje první Simmelovka, na doporučení taťky.
Walker is exaggerating to emphasize his point, but there is a lot of interesting facts.
The title is taken from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
Rychlé šípy ve Stínadlech
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.
Spousta zajímavých myšlenek, ale je potřeba autora brát s rezervou. Což je tedy potřeba asi vždy a všude.
It was not so eye-opening, probably because I’ve read a bunch of similar books before this one—I liked Essentialism much more.
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 first fiction book after a while and it was worth it. I want more!
Read Essentialism instead.
One of the best self-help book I’ve read.
Stop working and fully enjoy your life! Easy, isn’t it?
Whole30 diet, not very good for vegans and vegetarians
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.
An instant favourite. What a thinker this Harari!
Understand how habits are made and broken and change your life!
Funny. So famous that you need to read it.
The topic of simplicity is really complex.
An attempt at formalizing or defining morality. That’s a hard task, but Harris doesn’t fail completely.
Not so good as his previous book about cancer.
Great non-fiction comix. I want more of these!
Richard Dawkins selected short writings
people are quite bad in estimating how world is improving
Another attempt at attacking religion from one of Four Horsemen.
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.
You can’t make a mistake with anything from Randall Munroe if you like science and engineering. He is brilliant.
It felt to me like a very long blog entry or a longish article on web rather than a science popular book.
A good overview of the issue with publishing science
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.
An anthology of Hofstadter’s articles in Scientific American
A good non-fiction audiobook if you are cooking or cleaning your room.
An overview of a completely new scientific field
A great book by a great scholar. I expected more science and less politics, but still, great reading.
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.
Goodreads review: Another great book from Dawkins. I would love to have like 100 more pictures to illustrate the living or extinct animals.
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 is an instant favourite for me. Funny, full of interesting stuff.
This book had an impact on me while working on my PhD thesis as it resonated with my view of artificial (machine) intelligence.
Sometimes it felt a bit out-dated but the explanations of various algorithms and principles was very good and understanable.
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.
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.
“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)
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.
A set of short articles about language myths. Some great, some weak, but good overall.
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.
It is clear from this book that music and its perception is very deeply engraved into our brain.
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.
If I read this book before all those Arielys, Kahnemans, then it would be much more interesting and mind-boggling.
An overview of the problems with the current state of science and its methods and procedures
an epilogue to GEB
my first book read in English and while travelling
Cancer seems to be an inevitable part of our biology
Learn to manage your body expressions to help you persuade, empathize, soothe, … others
Dates probably wrong.
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.
clever and courageous; it strongly supports my convinction that we are just a bit better than apes
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.
Další výborná kniha od Asimova.
the most commonly unfinished book of all times–hard to digest but a real treat for a curious mind
Everytime you read it I learn something new.
Dawkins’ attack on the religion. This probably won’t make you an apostate but I liked it a lot as many other Dawkins’ books.
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.
Rady a tipy pro domácnosti. Některé rozumné, některé přehnané, ale žádné zbytečné.
4th book from Martin’s epos.
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)
A fiction book about last surviror on Earth, fighting zombies. Classic.
Third book from Dan Ariely. A bit less entertaining but still very informative.
1st book of Martin’s epos.
26. ledna jsem rozečetl knihu od Dana Browna. Šifru mistra Leonarda jsem viděl, Andělé a démony také. Dočetl jsem ji s Barunkou 2.
My first book from Taleb and an instant favourite
Anchors, framing, prospect theory and much more
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.
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.
Hlavní dílo českého teoretika překladu
The second best-known novel from Bradbury
Fakt nechápu, jak to mohl překladatel zvládnout přeložit.
A history of metaphors of memory, how they changed with technology and how they related to understanding of our minds.
Nevím, jestli jsem to dočetl.
Novela z Čapkovy noetické trilogie o vraždě Juraje, který se vrací po letech z Ameriky do Podparpatské Rusi
Novela z roku 1947 o jízdě autobusem v Kalifornii
První Simmelův román, true story o lidech zasypaných ve sklepě, kteří v sebeobraně zabijí chemika, který chce vyhodit zával do povětří.
Podobnost hrdiny s postavou prezidenta A. Novotného je čistě náhodná!
Výběr krátkých povídek a příběhů od Míly Nevrlého
Milostný příběh, který mne vůbec neoslovil.
A biography of the extravagant and famous pianist
Vtipný příběh o trampotách jedné příliš chytré lišky
Autobiografický román točící se kolem Ploštiny a partyzánů na konci 2. světové války
A must-read for classical music listeners.
Nádnerná a poetická knížka. Nejlépe čtená u ohně v rumunských horách.
One of my first popular science (math) book.
Must read.
Útlá knížečka se smutným koncem
classical dystopia
Pokus o navázání na úspěch Báječných let pod psa
Nevím o čem to bylo, ale bylo to dobrý.
I probably need to re-read this as it was boring as fuck when I read this at high school.
Druhý díl Tolkienovy ságy
Klasický román z francouzského prostředí
Mildly interesting
Už si nepamatuju o čem to bylo, ale všechny romány od Simmela byly děsně čtivý.
Na doporučení Vojty Hanuše, vůbec mě to nebavilo.
Román o nesmrtelnosti
Nevím o čem to bylo, ale bylo to dobrý.
An anthology of Clarke’s short stories. Great read!
Další Čapkova trefná metafora
Klasika.
Čapkova další trefná metafora
Česká sci-fi klasika.
Česká sci-fi klasika.
Česká sci-fi klasika
Česká sci-fi klasika.
Knížka, kterou jsem si opakovaně půjčoval z adamovské knihovny. Byl jsem snad jediný.
Česká klasika
Klasika.
Jirka Dražan, Modrý život, Přístavní čtvrť, …