Books

Currently Reading

• Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual by F.M. Alexander

  I’m interested in the idea that our habits/instincts may be maladaptive, like in the way we instinctually tend to lift with our backs rather than our legs. I really like the intro by John Dewey, especially with the idea that there’s so many scams and “cures”, but they don’t tend to require reasoning, sacrifice, or effort on the part of the individual. I find it interesting how it touches on how maladaptive instinct might influence education and democracy (and it reminds of Peirce’s The Fixation of Belief, especially the a priori method whereas reasoning might be considered method of science; we don’t tend to doubt our instinct and it’s too costly to use method of science/reasoning for everything, but we might not even recognize when we’re using a priori/instinct instead of reason/empiricism. The idea we should believe in something because it’s “scientific” weirdly isn’t method of science it’s method of authority, and it’s ironic when I’ve heard some people say “trust the science” because the Royal Society’s motto is literally nullius in verba. You actually have to do the observations yourself for it really to be method of science instead of hearsay.). I’m also curious how much can really be tested, or shown through recorded observation rather than remembered anecdotes. But here come the ironic remembered anecdotes: Like, I did test one part where he says that people may instinctually, when asked to move their head forward, will also tilt their shoulders back: my partner didn’t do this. Nor did she tild her head back when opening her jaw. So on those two parts, those seemed incorrect. When pointing my toes outward, I did tend to find myself trying to stand on the balls of my feet rather than my heels, which I found uncomfortable. But like all things “when you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha”, so just take what works and throw away the rest.

  The book also does echo some points in penmanship that I also learned about while studying Spencerian: we tend to lunge too far forward and rest on our arms in ways that actually restrict breathing and tend to make it harder to write, and the stress of trying to concentrate on my handwriting is counterproductive because I kind of stop breathing. Some ideas also connect in my head to Krav Maga, and how our instructor Micha says to keep “shoulders over hips, hips over knees” because we really do instinctually tend to overextend our shoulders while punching in ways that throw off our balance and make it harder to reset or blend moves smoothly; and the instinct to work on form almost ends with a kind of tense jerky roboticism that Micha and Danny have to remind people to relax and work on smoothness and lightness.

  I think it would be interesting to test my proprioception or coordination over time, and see how things change. If I could use a Wacom tablet I might actually be able to measure performance more rigorously, but I’m not sure how I’d create comparisons: Would I test myself under some “no conception” condition where I just let my muscles move while I’m distracted? Should I get some baseline over time where I don’t work on improving over time, then compare that with conscious effort? How could I compare a kind of instinctual effort against a relaxed/reasoned effort? I’d probably have to blind myself to the measurements, but I couldn’t blind myself to the intervention and I might be biased to try to make one better than the other. I would also think there’s an effect of mindfulness kind of like how the Japanese “point and call” method really reduces mistakes; in Spencerian they also really suggest you say the names of the strokes out loud, because otherwise your thoughts can stray from your muscles.

  The book is wordy, but I find myself going through it pretty quickly.

  Isn’t it ironic how I keep saying things like “I like the idea (of using reasoning over instinct)” when liking, itself, is instinct or a priori method and not reasoning? Maybe a true marker of reasoning would be like “I don’t like this, but it works/makes sense”.

• Never Search Alone by Phyl Terry
• Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming by Peter Seibel

  Really recommend it. Very informative, fun to read.

Finished Reading

• Permutation City by Greg Egan in June 2026

  Recommended by Jeff.

  Read it out loud with my partner. Liked it, and the kind of idea of what an individual really is if you can make copies and the copies can self-modify. I can’t say I completely wrapped my head around the dust hypothesis, but I did find it interesting. There’s certainly a relevance to this 1994 book now in 2026, especially with large language models (LLMs) and some ability to learn the style/voice of people (though that’s closer to the “mask” concept described in the book).

• Project Hail Mary on 2026-04-06

  Pretty good book, pretty funny. I like the problm solving and the explanation of the mechanics of different things. I definitely teared up at parts.

• The Mom Test
• Getting to Yes

  Classic book on negotation. Really reframes it to have both sides get what they want, rather than one “winning” and the other “losing”. Definitely one I need to buy for myself and reread.

• The Magic of Thinking Big

  Really good book for reframing your own biased thoughts.

To Read

Maybe

• The Pop-Up Book by Paul Jackson

  Here’s its page at SFPL.

• More Kurt Vonnegut books in general. Recommended by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
• Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship

  Teaches the American style of cursive that was used before the typewriter. Here’s a copy of it on the Internet Archive.

• The Palmer Method of Business Writing

  Used after Spencerian script. Presumably faster and simpler. See a copy on the Internet Archive.

• Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America
• Recommendations from Coders at Work:
  • The Elements of Programming Style by Kernighan and Plaugher
  • The Mythical Man Month
  • The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth
  • The Elements of Style
  • Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition Got the new 12th Edition in April 2026.
• Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual

Books I Like

I should organize this better.

• Getting Things Done by David Allen

  First read it in high school. Re-reading it with my partner and trying to implement some systems together.

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

  Also read this in high school. The title of the book makes it sound Machiavellian, but it’s more about how to be considerate of other people. It should be titled “How to think of others’ feelings and stop being a selfish dick” but then people wouldn’t read it.

• Economix

Books I Have

• Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 12th Edition

  I opted for the new 2025 dictionary rather than the 11th Edition, although I was worried that it may have been in some ways censored. It wasn’t, from what I can tell (I compared definitions of some slurs from the 11th and 12th editions); I find it appropriately neutral, even when some entries are updated. It’s got newer words like “dad bod” and “rizz”. It’s also got random lists of words like “10 words from the 1940s”, which may seem weird for a traditional dictionary, but they’re actually very fun to look through; I think they’re a good addition. I also enjoy the coverage of African American English words.

  I do think I should get an unabridged dictionary, like the Webster’s 1913 or Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in order to get better senses of a word (see James Somers’ You’re probably using the wrong dictionary).

• The Joy of Cooking

  Great reference for cooking.

• Emily Post’s Etiquette

  I need to more regularly read through it, but I do find it a good reference for things like letters and such.

Where to Buy Books

I’m assuming you want to avoid Amazon.com.

February 2026: I think my favorite online/in-person place is Half Price Books https://www.hpb.com/. They offer a lot of used books and they tend to be cheaper. I’m sad they’re Berkeley location on Shattuck closed, I should check out their place in Concord.

Better World Books (https://www.betterworldbooks.com/) is pretty good. I want to say that it has some relationship with the Internet Archive, which is probably how I first found out about it. I’ve bought a few used books through them. I feel like maybe some of their website features were annoying though; like the page won’t load at all if you don’t use JavaScript.

• Moe’s Books (2476 Telegraph, map, https://www.moesbooks.com/) in Berkeley
• Half Price Books (map, https://www.hpb.com/) also in Berkeley (2026-02-09: They’re closing or already closed! :-( )
• Pegasus Books (https://pegasusbookstore.com/) in Berkeley at 2349 Shattuck and 1855 Solano
• Bart’s Books (map, https://bartsbooksojai.com/) in Ojai
• Powell’s City of Books (map, https://www.powells.com/) in Portland
• BookBuyers was cool while it existed in Downtown Mountain View. They moved to Gilroy but an online search on 2026-02-09 suggests they closed.

More online or in person places (but larger brands, less local), or places I haven’t really used yet.

• https://bookfinder.com is like a meta-search engine for finding books. Seems to load quickly and lists multiple places like biblio.com, alibris, AbeBooks.
• AbeBooks (https://www.abebooks.com/) is another place I’ve heard of, but not used. 2026-02-09: Their website seems to load quickly and feels lighter weight. However, they are a subsidiary of Amazon.
• https://bookshop.org/ apparently supports local bookstores, haven’t used it much.
• Books, Inc. (https://www.booksinc.com/) has a lot of locations. 2026-02-09: Their website has an annoying pop-up asking for your email address. I guess they got bought by Barnes and Noble?
• Barnes and Noble (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/)
• Alibris.com is from Emeryville. Look out for their email checkbox saying “Sign up for our newsletter and get over $300 in coupons each year”, it’s automatically checked.

Misc

You can send books cheaply through the mail via media mail (see mail).