Do note that this is an old post (from my last archived blog) that I’m refactoring : more on that here
The Unaltered Entry [2022-02-01 Tue 10:11] - 7946 I, hitherto, have been reading books as a single unit of intellectual conveyance. However, that strategy doesn’t work for all the works. Some authors have their writings crisply intertwined with their other writings.
Approaching a single book as a part of a larger intellectual conveyance is more efficient in the longer term if one intends to read all the work of a particular author.
Books play a pivotal role in the life of any aspiring and existing intellectual. I began reading diversely and seriously when I was 19 and immediately regretted not starting sooner.
Reading sets you up for an involved existence. If you read vastly, you’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
Over the span of 3 years (2019 - 2022), I read around a 100 books ranging from the classics, biographies, auto-biographies, physics, computer science, anthropology, data science, etymology, theology, game theory, mathematics, history, how-to-books, nutrition, physiology , fitness, health, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, business (okay, don’t judge - we all do this), economics, writing, self help (guilty as charged), spirituality, humor (guides to being funny and similar stuff), young adult (only 1 - please don’t chastise me - I could not handle the cringe), philosophy (a lot - please don’t chastise me) and meta books (speed reading, how to consume books, taking notes, etc).
I took this up when I had to setup a bunch of NLP pipelines for work and this does stand true to its name - it is a quick and practical index into approaches, introductory theory and useful libraries for the same.
I don’t like reading text books at a stretch due to several reasons:- “cross a bridge, when you get to it” is something that has stood the test of time for me when it comes to reading practical books.
Given I’ve passed through SICP once, quickly grasping common lisp to build stuff and explore the traditional and industrial aspects of lisp (I know clojure exists but traditional…) was my next objective: with decent speed and only solving the somewhat involved exercises, it took me two weeks to complete this book.
The exercises aren’t meant to be a challenge but to adapt to the environment and the topics introduced. The book does not explore concepts with depth (CLOS, macros, etc…) but that shouldn’t be the objective of an introduction anyway.
