Gopal Krishnan

Background

Ever since I stopped commuting to work, and switched permanently to working from home I’ve struggled to consistently read books. I have missed that consistent time block, that I could use to work through my backlog.

After my son was born in Jan of 2024, I found that I had blocks of time where it was easier for me to listen than it was to read. I used these blocks to continue to catch up on my podcasts, but quickly found that I was out of episodes to listen to. That’s when I signed up for Audible, and I realized this was what I needed to regain my hobby of reading books.

So here’s me writing up this post in the hope that with each passing year, my count of books I’ve read keeps going up. I hope one day to beat my record of 50 books read, back in 2017. That was the year when I finally read the LOTR trilogy as well as the Count of Monte Cristo!

The List

• Steve Jobs: I re-read this book every few years. As I’ve gotten older, and progressed in my career I’ve learned new lessons from his journey.
• Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology: This was a book recommended to me by my Dad, which means it’s cleared a high bar already. I thought I knew the gist of how chips work, and their history. But, this book goes into greater detail about how they work and the history behind how we are seeing a fight emerge between the US, and China around this.
• Project Hail Mary: This is a book written by the author of The Martian, a book I really enjoyed. I really liked this book, as it approaches aliens, and the fight for humanity’s survival from a very realistic lens. It has a sprinkling of comedy in there as well. It felt like a short story rendition of The Expanse series, in that the science felt real and didn’t feel hand wavy.
• Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It: Having grown up on Mythbusters, Adam Savage’s book was at the top of my list to read at some point. I finally got around to listening to the Audible version of this, and he is a wonderful narrator. This was a great book, and I learnt so much about planning, management, creating and life in general.