All previous Book Reviews/ ratings can be found at jessesbooks.com.
New month! Spring is sprung, even in San Francisco! Warm weather! Cheers aplenty!
New Additions (Bolded)
[⭐️⭐️⭐️] Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Nir Eyal – This was a really good book, specific to product managers and designers on how to build good products that keep people coming back. Only read it if you’re in those jobs and looking for practical advice, but probably required if you’re building product.
[⭐️⭐️⭐️] Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes – Another Lower Haight Club Book Club down. This was a very well-written book, but I can’t say I enjoyed it that much because it’s sad & can be tough to read long chunks. The premise is very interesting: a 40-year-old with intellectual disabilities is given a scientific procedure that takes him from low IQ to genius in a span of months. However, Charlie’s emotional maturity doesn’t experience the same level of growth, so how does one handle rapid intellectual maturity without being able to understand it fully emotionally? How does one’s personality change when they realize that people don’t behave towards them the way they thought they did? And how do we as a society deal with different intellectual levels? Flowers for Algernon makes you think about these questions.
2025 Rankings
Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, Alex Hutchinson [⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️]
The Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yaros [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
The Huntress, Kate Quinn [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Nir Eyal [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II, Gregory Freeman [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, Mark Harmon & Leon Carroll Jr. [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Green Lights, Matthew McConaughey [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Blowout, Rachel Maddow [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Iron Flame, Rebecca Yaros [⭐️⭐️⭐️]
Complete Reviews
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Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, Alex Hutchinson – Endure is all about the science (both physiological and psychological) of endurance performance and how humans can push our physical and mental limits. Contrary to what all my friends think, I’m not actually an endurance person myself, but I find the underlying science fascinating. The first section of the book focuses on the physical (VO2 Max, fueling/ hydration, lactic threshold, running economy, etc.), the second section the mental (how different parts of the brain contribute to or hold back performance), and the final section on how to push our limits (it turns out there’s no magic solution, but going into the pain cave over and over sure helps). There’s a ton of cited research and so at points Endure is quite dense, but athletes will find this interesting.
⭐️⭐️⭐
The Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yaros – Yes, the rumors you heard are true, I did in fact read “that dragon book”… and didn’t hate it. Romantasy isn’t my preferred genre, but I caved in to see what all the hype was about. Fourth Wing is Harry Potter meets Hunger Games meets How to Train Your Dragon and is the definition of popcorn fiction. Follow Violet Sorrengail as she is forced to become a dragon rider at the Basgiath War College (aka this world’s Hogwarts, and somehow much more deadly). In between her unlikely journey to overcome her physical odds, there’s the constant threat of death, the allure of magical powers, and the spice of steamy romance (that is so incredibly over the top, but maybe smut isn’t my thing). The writing isn’t the best, the plot isn’t the most thought-provoking (at times the twists are incredibly predictable) but it’s certainly a fun read. Not sure if I’ll finish the series but not mad that I read it! Now if you want a realllllllll sci-fi novel about an underdog finding themselves while attending an elite institution where they could die at any moment, boy do I have the book for you 😏.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt – The first (real) book read by the GSB Lower Haight Book Club was about fictional Sowell Bay, a small town on the Oregon coast, and the everyday people who inhabit it, as well as a giant Pacific octopus. It was a solid book, that wasn’t particularly deep, but has some great feel-good elements and is a bit of a poor man’s A Man Called Ove. It blends together one man’s search for a dad he never knew, as well as how to be a functioning member of society, one woman’s acceptance of old age, continued grief over a lost child, and the everyday drumbeat of life in between.
The Huntress, Kate Quinn – Unfortunately, I read Diamond Eye first, and The Huntress seems like a discount version: World War II mystery/ thriller, following a strong Russian female protagonist (although in this version she’s one of an ensemble) and examining the inner sacrifices we make to survive in times of war. The book follows the post-war hunt for a brutal Nazi war criminal known as die Jägerin (the Huntress) to bring her to justice, through the lens of a female Russian pilot, a British war journalist turned Nazi hunter, and a teenage Bostonian with a mysterious new stepmother…
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner – As a former engineer and long-time nerd, The Idea Factory should have been right up my alley. It’s been on my To-Read list for five years, so I was pumped when it finally became available on Libby. However, I have a confession dear reader: this book literally put me to sleep. It was dense and dry and would have been even worse if it wasn’t for how incredible Bell Labs’s legacy is. I 100% did not recognize how much of modern society was built on the foundations of this elite telecom research department; their inventions include the transistor (aka the basis for computers), the maser & laser (which is a prerequisite for the next one), fiber optic cables (aka how you get fast internet), satellite comms (ever heard of those), information theory (aka how to send information over the internet), the list goes on. Incredible that all of these came from one institution, and I wonder if it’s even possible to have another similar lab again. Companies rarely put so much emphasis on basic research anymore; they aren’t incentivized to. But unfortunately The Idea Factory is heavy on the technical and scientific, and it can ready like a physics textbook sometimes. While fascinating, it’s probably best suited for the engineers and scientists, and not the casuals.
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, Nir Eyal – This was a really good book, specific to product managers and designers on how to build good products that keep people coming back. Only read it if you’re in those jobs and looking for practical advice, but probably required if you’re building product.
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes – Another Lower Haight Club Book Club down. This was a very well-written book, but I can’t say I enjoyed it that much because it’s sad & can be tough to read long chunks. The premise is very interesting: a 40-year-old with intellectual disabilities is given a scientific procedure that takes him from low IQ to genius in a span of months. However, Charlie’s emotional maturity doesn’t experience the same level of growth, so how does one handle rapid intellectual maturity without being able to understand it fully emotionally? How does one’s personality change when they realize that people don’t behave towards them the way they thought they did? And how do we as a society deal with different intellectual levels? Flowers for Algernon makes you think about these questions.
The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II, Gregory Freeman – The Forgotten 500 is the incredible story of Operation Halyard, a WWII rescue mission of 500 Allied airmen who had been trapped behind German lines in occupied Yugoslavia across six months in 1944. The operation was carried out by the precursor to the CIA, and it was done in complete stealth and with incredible success. This should be enough for the book to have been incredible, but the author simply was not very good. Unfortunately, in the end, I don’t think Freeman does Halyard justice and while this is a rare new WWII story for me, it misses the mark.
Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, Mark Harmon & Leon Carroll Jr. – Growing up, I loved watching NCIS, so was excited for another Pearl Harbor story that promised to teach me something new (hard to do since I’ve read a LOT about it) and was by the NCIS actors. I was somewhat disappointed, as most of the new material was about government processes and reports being generated, and much less about subterfuge. There are much better Pearl Harbor books out there if you’re interested.
Green Lights, Matthew McConaughey – I was pretty disappointed in Matthew McConaughey’s memoir. He’s got a pretty interesting past, full of brash decisions, following his heart, and marching to the beat of his own drum. The book had great reviews, but it was full of cliches, absurd McConaughey-isms (alright, alright, alright anyone?), and too many silly metaphors to count. It was solidly okay and nothing more.
Blowout, Rachel Maddow – If I had a nickel for every time I read a book about the history of the oil and gas industry in the last two years, I'd have two nickels-- which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Jokes aside, I’m conflicted on Blowout. A lot of the backstory I already knew from The Prize, which in my opinion is a far superior (and longer) book. Blowout is more modern, with a big focus on Russia and Putin as oil superpowers in the early 2010s and how this had led to Russian aggression in Eastern Europe and interference in American Democracy. My problems are mainly: 1) it’s flat-out boring at points 2) there are a lot of subplots happening at once that I’m not sure are tied together very strongly by the end 3) Maddow inserts here snide, snarky comments everywhere. I can arrive at the conclusion that big oil is bad on my own thank you very much (see what I did there?). Decent but probably wouldn’t recommend it.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King – King’s memoir is half backstory that explains what primed him to become a writer, his path to getting there, and why he is qualified to give advice and half actual fiction writing advice. It was obviously masterfully written and contained great advice but it didn’t do it for me, perhaps because I’m not the artistic type. That being said, if I ever do decide to properly write (it will most likely be nonfiction, let’s be real) I will 100% go back and reference the second half of On Writing.
Iron Flame, Rebecca Yaros – The second book in the Fourth Wing series lived up to my original expectations. In other words, I was not really a fan of this one. It felt like there should have been two shorter books because the first and the second halves were thematically entirely different. The climax felt rushed, and the plot armor was real. Parts straight up didn’t make sense. It was still easy to read, popcorn fiction, but too long, and the writing wasn’t good. Pass from me–I think my Fourth Wing journey ends here.
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We move,
Jesse