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Visakan Veerasamy

Singaporean writer and author of FRIENDLY AMBITIOUS NERD; blogs at visakanv.com about ambition, writing and thinking in public.

7 books on the record · 6 Mar 2021 – 6 Mar 2021 · @visakanv

The bar next to each date shows how long ago it was said: 6d is days, 4yr is years.

loved it

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I remember Antifragile blowing my mind several times when I first read it. It didn't exactly have anything dramatically new to say that I hadn't heard before in some way, but it brought together things in a way that I found compelling. It made me rethink and reevaluate a lot of my life and gave me a useful frame for making sense of things with.

on visakanv.com · 6 Mar 2021

loved it

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

I can't remember when exactly I started looking into David Ogilvy – or where I got this book, probably from a secondhand bookstore somewhere – but once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. Ogilvy had such a great personality. Very spirited, opinionated guy with a great sense of occasion.

on visakanv.com · 6 Mar 2021

recommends it

Dune by Frank Herbert

The book is worth reading for its own sake, and it's particularly worth reading (in my opinion) to get a sense of how it has impacted so much of sci-fi and pop culture.

on visakanv.com · 6 Mar 2021

liked it

Masters of Doom by David Kushner

I was really excited when a friend sent me this book, because it gets right into the details of the history and production of these games that meant so much to me.

on visakanv.com · 6 Mar 2021

liked it

Predatory Thinking by Dave Trott

Predatory Thinking, by Dave Trott. I found this book in a bookshop at some point and I found it really compelling. It includes a story about neutrinos that I love.

on visakanv.com · 6 Mar 2021

liked it

The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain

The Nasty Bits, by Anthony Bourdain. I read this book not too long before Anthony Bourdain died. I remember really enjoying his voice, his style, his sense of flair.

on visakanv.com · 6 Mar 2021

recommends it

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud: I believe I first saw this book being recommended highly by Bret Victor aka worrydream. I think I then encountered a few screenshots of it on the Internet that made me really like it. It's very worth reading even if you don't really care all that much about comics.

on visakanv.com · 6 Mar 2021

Everything Visakan Veerasamy recommends — not just books — on rcmnd →

That little bar

It says how long ago something was said, so you can tell last month from 2014 without doing the arithmetic. Full and green is recent; it drains and cools as the date gets older, and empties completely at about 6 years.

A striped bar means the date itself is an estimate — the source did not carry an exact one. An entry with no date at all gets no bar.