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- Hey everyone. Today we're gonna be taking a deep dive into my own personal library. I wanna share with you some books that I've read recently, and some insightful takes I've learned along the way. So let's get started. First up, we have Stay True by Hua Hsu. If I could describe this book in one word, it would be "identity". So this is a coming of age memoir that shows how our identities are shaped through those foundational friendships that we create in our late teens, early twenties. And this book had me by the throat. It's so soft and gentle, yet I was ripping through the book like it was a thriller.
I think it's because I was immediately transported to a time that I actually often daydream about, which are my late teens, early twenties. I think it's because everything was just so much more raw and vivid back then, because everything is full of novelty. A lot of your firsts happen during that period of your life. You've got your first love, your first real night out, your first real taste of independence. And I think it's a time where we're figuring out what we like and just trying on a bunch of different identities as if they were T-shirts,
and reading Hua's reflections on his early twenties self felt like I was peering into the mind of someone that I'd be deathly intimidated of. He's like the type of person that has that expansive knowledge about underground music and obscure art references. And having access to his most intimate thoughts showed me what's behind the trope of that like, anti-mainstream, artsy person. Many of his abrasive judgements were actually a defense mechanism. It's kind of like that mentality of reject them first before they can reject you, but internally, he was just a softie. So this book is kind of like a diary, but there is a plot.
It follows Hua's relationship to a boy that he meets in college named Ken. And he quickly becomes best friends with him, which is kind of a surprise, because Ken is the mainstream trope, and as much as Hua tries to distance himself from him, they end up becoming inseparable, because true connections aren't about the surface things, they're deeper than that. What counts in the end are harmonized values, shared rituals, mutual acceptance, and you know, just putting in the time for someone who shows up for you. Everything else is just extra credit. We kind of all store and collect different versions of ourselves as we grow up. And reading this memoir reminded me of the version of me where I was so insecure
and questioning everything about myself. Like I used to worry about whether the music that I was listening to was too cliche, or if my clothes weren't in season, and it probably just stemmed from my deep-rooted need to be liked and accepted. And I remember just trying so hard to be me, when I didn't even realize that I was in the process of becoming me. And it's honestly easier to connect with people once you drop who you think you should be, and amplify the parts that make you uniquely you. Next up, we have Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. This one is all about friendship and love. It centers around two childhood best friends, Sam and Sadie, who build a company over their mutual love of video games,
only to later realize that this company is something that they use to invest in their mutual love for one another. I feel like this book captures how beautiful and rare lifelong friendships are, and the effort that it takes to maintain and navigate them. So Sam and Sadie's friendship spans all the way from their childhood till their late thirties, and now when they look at each other, they can time travel, because that relationship embodies their past, their present, and the future, all in one perfect little package. So in the novel, they create a video game called Ichigo while they're still in college, and spoiler alert, it is wildly successful! And while the success brings them comfort and stability, it also brings a lot of pressure
and messiness and insecurities. Reading this book reminded me of how fun and exciting it is to create something with your friends, especially when you're young, when everything feels possible. It's less about the actual project, and more about harnessing that human connection with someone. Like honestly, Sam and Sadie could have been building anything. It could have been a bakery, a band, a label. In the book, the game is originally created because Sam wanted to be there for Sadie and reconnect with her. But like in all close relationships, if you fail to communicate the things that are on your mind,
it will develop cracks. When you don't express your true thoughts and your feelings, that anger then mutates into resentment, which then tints everything. So if there is a moral to this story, at least, it's that life is short, and you shouldn't leave it for Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and do it today and today. So be courageous, do it now. You might have more time, but you might not have more chances. So there's been a lot of discussion regarding AI, and quite frankly, it's overwhelming. Like we're in the middle of an AI revolution, so I think it's wise to start learning about it. This is why my next pick is Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark.
One word to encapsulate this book is "the future". This is the perfect book to learn about what could realistically happen as we live on earth with super intelligent forms that are smarter than us, and can essentially do everything better than us. In fact, they will surpass us cognitively in every possible way. AI may need a lot of resources, but AI never sleeps. The reality is we're already living in a time where machines are understanding our world, and it's rapidly changing the way we're living today. And of course there's a bunch of fear and unease surrounding this topic, but Max does an incredible job defining and breaking down each concept clearly, because in order to build the future that we want,
we have to be able to understand it. The chapter that I found the most fascinating was the one where he explored all the different AI aftermath scenarios. Like it almost felt like I was reading Sci-Fi, but then I had this chilling realization that one of these options could be our future. Like there's this optimistic scenario called egalitarian utopia, where humans, cyborgs, uploads, and super intelligences, can all peacefully coexist together, thanks to property abolition and guaranteed income.
Like, this would be my first choice, because it's the one where all forms of consciousness can coexist together. And then there's the super worst scenario where AIs conquer us, and then wipe us off from the planet in ways that we don't even understand. Whatever the years and decades ahead look like, the development of AI is progressing fast. Like at this point, the toothpaste is out of the tube. And how we choose to live with it is up to us. And the better informed we are about AI, about what it is, what it isn't, what it can do, and what it can't, that is going to help us be more prepared for the outcome in the future.
Next up, we have Filterworld by Kyle Chayka. This book is all about control, because if you don't take control of your algorithm, it will take control of you. It takes a close look at the evolution of social networks and the algorithms that power them, and how it's all changing culture. So fundamentally, an algorithm is nothing but an equation that's inputted to create a desired effect. And today, algorithms run the show in so many ways. It feels like they're everywhere. (high-pitched voice) The algorithms can do this.
(robotic voice) The algorithm knows me. (high-pitched voice) The algorithm is gaslighting me. (normal voice) We talk about the algorithm all the time, like it's our lover, tormentor, or boss, but do we actually know what the algorithm really is? Well, with this book, Kyle is here to help. He shines a big bright spotlight on this whole topic. Algorithms as we know them are mostly deployed to do one thing: maximize users' time spent on apps. For a social media app, the algorithm explicitly runs to keep you glued into an endless loop in your feed. Since they want you to stay engaged and spend more time on the app, they keep serving you cultural and social things that you might like, sprinkled with ads.
Same goes for Netflix and Spotify. Like all those thumbnails that are generated on that screen are specifically tailored to you. And every time you interact with a piece of content or seek something out, the algorithm will then add that to their data set, so then they can recommend you more content. I've been creating content online since 2010, so I feel like I've experienced firsthand the progression of all these digital trends. And at this point, I feel like every time I scroll on social media, I am being served the same content over and over again. From fashion design to interior, to cooking crazes, it's all the same.
I feel like it's becoming this cultural homogenization, and these algorithms are kind of smushing us into this cultural center of gravity. And Kyle's book is an investigation on how and why that is happening. I especially love this section when he's talking about taste and how it's formed. Because taste is fundamental to developing your own sense of self. And with these algorithms, they run on our taste and our preferences, and without them, it just kind of guides us into this murky, vanilla middle. Getting taste requires you to experience the thing in its entirety, and then evaluating your own emotional response to it.
Taste has always been informed by outside forces, whether you are going to a show, or looking through a magazine, or your friend recommends you something. But now that so much of our culture is online and information is delivered digitally, like, the feeling of acquiring taste is, is like, it feels soulless and colorless, which kind of leads us to where we are right now. So this book was a reminder that, although we live in an algorithm-defined world, we do not need to let the algorithm define us. If anything, this book just inspired me to get out more and experience life, touch grass, if you will, and made me wanna talk to more people, observe what people were wearing in real life,
go to more art galleries, and just acquire taste this way. Like taste requires effort. It should not be a passive experience. And you should like things because you truly like them, not because the internet told you to. On the topic of questioning everything, my next book pick is Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. One word to describe this book is circumspect, which essentially means to consider all circumstances and consequences before you act or judge something. There are so many delusions in our culture that we just blindly accept, and this collection of essays really challenges them and makes you see them through a different light.
Topics like the internet, drugs, the wedding industrial complex, and one essay in particular just had me stunned. It's called "Always Be Optimizing", which is all about influencer culture. It was pretty eye-opening, and at times made me feel deeply uncomfortable, because it just confronts this dark truth in this career that's dominated by women. When a girl is born, we're taught to be very aware of our surroundings and how we're being perceived. The world requires us to be appealing in some way. So we're trained to make a presentation of ourselves, put on makeup, maintain your figure, iron your hair. And this is why women have dominated the personal branding section of the internet more than men.
The set of standards that have been perpetuated through the decades have now become a career for us to become the ideal woman. And we see it all the time on social media. It's like the really skinny girl, fit girl, in an Alo set, taking a selfie in her Pilates class. Or like, she's sipping a matcha latte, reading a trending book on BookTok. As I was reading this, I had this out of body experience where I realized how bizarre my job actually is. It's one where young women can capitalize on how well they present themselves through self-surveillance.
This is really distorting, because your success is contingent on how you look and edit yourself. But how long can someone continue to be appealing? How long can you continue to optimize? This essay in particular reminded me of a recent New Yorker article by Mary Gaitskill, about women and competition. I love this quote. "Men compete about what they do, women compete about what they are." I know, it's like, it's dizzying.
It means that women are competing over our most fundamental traits, from our physical selves to our personalities. This can range from who has bigger boobs or our smaller waist, who can articulate better, or dish better advice. It's like a competition over everything. And with influencer culture on social media, now the viewer has a visual scoreboard on how all these content creators are ranked. Technology has not only reinforced this competition, but expanded the demands and expectations. So this essay just made me dig a lot deeper about what I've gotten myself into in this career, and also what kind of content that I wanna produce for my platform.
The thing is, I still get deep pleasure from constructing a cute outfit or trying a new technique for a smokey eye. But I think I also wanna continue sharing accessible recipes, and videos like this, where I'm talking about things I learned from books that have challenged the way I think. In this system that's designed to make us feel inferior, try and seek out people and content that feel enriching. That's my takeaway. The final book I have is Hunt, Gather, Parent, by Michaeleen Doucleff. This is the one parenting book that I would gift anyone with a toddler.
One word to describe this book would be "TEAM", which is technically an acronym, so I guess I'm cheating. A major thing that's changed after reading this book, is now I released the need to entertain my child. What I mean by this is, prior to reading this book, whenever I'd be spending time with my son, I would create this itinerary that was completely child-focused. It was children's museums and playrooms, but now I focus on just involving him in my everyday life. I know this might sound, like, obvious to a lot of people, but it was news to me. When I'm getting mail, I say "mail time!" And then he helps me like,
open the mailbox with the key, and helps me open up all the letters. It's just like, really sweet, and I think because I am just including him into like the chores and everyday things that I do, I'm now not scrambling to get everything done when he's asleep. Like sure, everything takes a little bit longer, but it's really sweet and such like, an amazing bonding moment. When we're cooking together, he actually has his own little knife, and he'll just cut the fruit in whatever shape that he wants. Like I don't interfere or don't correct him. I just let him do his thing, and if he asks for help, then I'll just say, "Watch Mama," and then I'll show him how I do it.
I don't know, I feel like this major tweak has just helped us bond even further and it builds confidence in him, and me, because we're both pretty new to this thing. Alright folks, that is a wrap on this video. These were the six standouts that really got me thinking. If there is a selection of books or just like, one takeaway that you got from something that you recently read, please share in the comments down below. I truly love it when it becomes this like, thread and discussion. So leave some love, leave some of your insights, and I'll see you guys in the next one.
Bye!
