I haven’t learn a lot within the final 30 days as I’ve been consumed with writing, talking, and occasions across the launch of Give First: The Energy of Mentorship. The Kindle model is now accessible, and the paperback model can be launched on Tuesday, June 24, so I’m within the house stretch of pre-launch. It hit #1 in Startups yesterday, so if you’re inclined to purchase, now’s the time to maintain the momentum going!
Amy and I are in Aspen, so I’m having quite a bit much less social within the evenings. Which means – studying on the sofa after dinner.
I completed two books final evening. The primary was Barry Eisler’s new novel The System: A Novel of the Deep State. I really like Barry’s writing and skim each e book he writes. He has complete mastery of the modern thriller with terribly vibrant characters and a zillion endnotes that tie to issues which are truly occurring in the true world. The protagonist, Valeria Velez, is incredible, and I hope she exhibits up in a couple of extra books. And, John Rain wants to indicate up within the Valeria Velez collection. If you happen to like psychological floss, Brad-the-book-salesman says make at present a two-fer and purchase The System: A Novel of the Deep State and Give First: The Energy of Mentorship.
I attempt to solely learn psychological floss each third e book, so final evening I started working on consuming Little Black Classics Field Set (Penguin Little Black Classics). It’s my summer season studying mission, which is a curated library of eighty pocket-sized books that encapsulate the breadth and variety of literary historical past. This assortment spans continents and centuries.
For instance, listed here are a couple of summarized by my favourite AI: the searing social commentary of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal; the timeless Greek tragedy of Sophocles’ Antigone; haunting tales of the macabre in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Inform-Story Coronary heart; the revolutionary political idea of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto; profound reflections on life from historic Japan in Kenkō’s A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Timber; the witty and satirical juvenilia of Jane Austen’s The Beautifull Cassandra; psychological depth in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s quick story The Meek One; the lyrical great thing about John Keats’ narrative poem The Eve of St Agnes; early feminist arguments in Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Lady; and the sharp, observational fiction of Anton Chekhov’s Gooseberries.
I learn the primary one within the collection final evening: Mrs Rosie and the Priest by Giovanni Boccaccio. I’ve by no means learn something by Boccaccio and didn’t know that 14th-century Italians had been so filthy and degenerate (properly, sure, I did, nothing ever adjustments, we’re people in any case.) The commentary on gender, feminine company, and society is sharp. I favored all the feminine protagonists, however Bartolomea was my favourite. The dialogue, even translated into English, is enjoyable and spicy.
As I proceed to see how good (or unhealthy) totally different AIs are, I requested Gemini, “What lesson am I speculated to study from the e book.” After it gave me three tedious and overwrote paragraphs, I requested, “Give this to me in a single paragraph. Use Brad Feld’s fashion of writing from feld.com”
“I really like when an article from the 1300s delivers a psychological mannequin that feels prefer it was written for a startup founder in 2025. Boccaccio’s story about Mrs. Rosie is a masterclass in hacking a legacy system. You will have a protagonist going through a deadly consequence from a algorithm—a authorized and spiritual OS—that’s essentially uneven and designed to learn the individuals in energy. As a substitute of accepting the premise of the sport, she calls bullshit on all the system with an argument so logical and witty that it forces the system to self-correct. She doesn’t combat the ability construction with power; she makes use of mental arbitrage to reveal its hypocrisy and chapter. It’s a robust reminder that difficult the core assumptions of a damaged system is commonly infinitely more practical than attempting to win inside its silly, arbitrary constraints.“
Eh – not so good. And the outline is simply about one among 4 tales.
