Fourth Group of Books I Read in 2026

  Reading Period: July 09 - Present

1.  Black Wave (A), by Kim Ghattas

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43565323-black-wave

        Phenomenal book. Was strangely a bit hard for me to get into it, but once I was hooked it was a great read. Fascinating bit of history, covering Iran and Saudi Arabian since the Iranian revolution in 1978. It's a part of the world that I don't think too much about, but is relevant for much of modern geopolitics (especially given that we are currently at war with Iran). It's also pretty depressing to think through the oppression being enforced at the moment, and how backward much of the world is in respect to women's rights. There's also a pattern of liberal leaders teaming up with religious fundamentalists to enact change against authoritarianism, only to wind up crushed by the religious right immediately after which leads to an order of magnitude worse authoritarianism.

    I'd say this is probably the most informative book I've read on the middle east, would highly recommend.

2.  AI Engineering (A), by Chip Huyen

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216848047-ai-engineering

    Given I'm familiar with much of the underlying subject matter, I chose this book mostly to get a bird's eye view of the field and an general overview of the topics at hand. I thought it was very informative, but will need to do actually thorough studying on the chapter topics to actually understand everything, it went through material pretty quick so without a pen and paper on hand, and a LLM to answer follow-ups, it was hard to solidify my thinking.

    

3.  The Brain: A Very Short Introduction (A), by Michael O'Shea

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74637.The_Brain

    Honestly a pleasant surprise. Crazy interesting read, and exactly what I wanted from a "short" introduction. It's unbelievable how our brains work honestly, and I absolutely need to choose this as my next topic somehow and learn at a much deeper level. Also, lots of overlap with AI interpretability and a bit spooky to start learning the basics of neuroscience only after being so steeped in AI literature.

4.  Cribsheet (A), by Emily Oster

Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40121328-cribsheet

    Really good! I'd say it was much better than Expecting Better, she really improved her writing here and I thought it was less biased/more concrete. Raising a child is a totally different ballgame, and honestly a lot more interesting than just pregnancy. I thought her advice was really quite useful, and a great basis for understanding what parents actually should think about.