The Nordic countries tend to show up near the top of well-being surveys. What can we learn from them for our own culture? As a big fan of Nordic culture, I expected to buy into everything in this book. Alas, I found myself being extra critical. Some of the ideas seem pretty clear, if counter intuitive. You want to increase women's pay gap relative to men? Provide for better paternity leave.
Education was a little more questionable. It seems everybody likes to pick the part of the Finnish education success that best suits them. The author claims Finnish education was reformed primarily around equity. All schools were high quality and everybody had access to the highest level of education. (Even "private" schools would fall closely under the similar government scheme.) Alas, much of that is missed in the US. Seattle schools are obsessed with equity. Yet, the implementation method often involves lowering the bar. There is also the matter of private schools. If the public school district provides an equally bad experience for all, yet there are abundant, high cost, high quality private offerings is that really equitable? The author also noted some problems with "school choice" in other Scandinavian countries. Public school advocates will use this to fight against vouchers and charter schools. However, the school districts get into the same game with open enrollment, option schools and magnet schools. It is just school choice controlled by the education bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is the real difference. US schools have a significantly greater number of administrators per student. They also rely extensively on standardized tests. The antagonistic union situation results in teachers being treated more as cogs in a system rather than skilled professionals as they are in Scandinavia. School districts are also fragmented and rely on a local property tax base for funding. Nordic countries tend to be fairly homogeneous populations, however, there are plenty of states that are similar in population and homogeneity to Nordic countries. They could likely reform their education system to have similar success, but there will be big fights from both the parents and schools in order to get there.
The book lauds the social welfare benefits of the Nordic countries, while lamenting the lack of high cost of medicine and lack of social benefits in the United States. Taxes, however, are not too different in both. What gives? The United States often tries to do "socialism on the cheap". Rather than give a benefit like healthcare to everybody, it is only given out to a certain population under an income threshold. There are also a large number of tax breaks for different behaviors or activities. This makes for a highly complex system that is in many ways highly restrictive in behavior. You arguably have a choice in health plans in the United States. However, medicaid is only for the poor, medicare for the elderly, VA for veterans. There is a huge tax subsidy for private health insurance plans - but only if purchased through an employer. If you want to purchase insurance on your own, you lose out on most government largess (and tend to pay higher rates on top of that.) And this just gets you insurance which may or may not let you see the doctor you want. (And there is no guarantee that you can even purchase a policy that will let you see them.)
The Nordic model of benefits provides similar benefits to everyone. Anybody has access to the same health care at the same cost. Education, parental leave, unemployment and other benefits are provided by the government. This frees companies and citizens to focus on adding value rather that entrepreneurial risks will leave their family on the street. These benefits are covered by taxes. However, the tax rates are mostly flat, instead of highly graduated. They are still somewhat progressive, but not obsessively so as in the United States. In the US, it seems too much effort is spent on making a "progressive" tax system and then limiting benefits to those that are "in need". Then the tax code is filled with a bazillion loopholes to prevent these high taxes from negatively impacting "special interests". The result is a lower class that receives a large amount of benefits and pays no taxes and an upper class that can spend the effort to legally avoid taxes. This leaves a middle class that earns to much to qualify for benefits, yet doesn't have the resources to avoid taxes and thus pays away a large portion of their income. Public benefits tend to be stigmatized and associated with the "poor". (However, tax breaks carry no such stigma - even though they are essentially just another "payment" from the government. Would removing income validation change things? (It could also reduce some incentives for "reducing" income and working under the table to qualify for benefits.)
The book ends with the author becoming a US citizen. She was willing to sacrifice the Nordic safety net after falling in love with an American. Despite the challenges, there are advantages of the US way. I had met a Dane who was similarly desirous to move to the US due to the more dynamic start up culture. There may be something in the lack of safety net that pushes people to work harder. (Though there may also be the advantage of a much larger market.) There are many places in the US that would love to have a similar social welfare system. However, attempts often fall victim to entrenched interests (such as insurance companies and government agencies.) How can the United States keep the entrepreneurial spirit and move beyond third-world social welfare?
Norse mythology is not as well documented as Roman and Greek mythology. Stories were mostly written down in the Christian age in order to help with the understanding of some common expressions. The stories are a little different from the comic book versions. Loki is an integral part of the gods. However, he is a crafty trickster. He often gets into trouble with his trickery. However, he was a way of getting out of trouble also. Thor's hammer came from as a result of his plot to get Thor's wife's hair back. (He tried to make his dwarf crafters lose, but instead they made a "smaller" hammer that Thor ended up loving.) There are also stories that explain why salmon migrate upstream and other bits of "science". Interestingly, the stories had originated in a germanic area. There is a lot that is lot documented, and what we have was only written to help understand some of the Scandinavian sagas.
Rethinking Narcissism explores the good and bad of self-absorbed narcissistic behavior. Healthy narcissism has the proper balance of self-esteem and empathy. Echo behavior manifests an "anti-narcissist behavior that can be just bad on its own right. People are actively denigrating themselves and refuse to open up or find joy in others. Extreme narcissism involves being obsessed with oneself and seeing others as mere tools. The conditions often develop in response to experiences. They are methods with coping with stressful environments and can be a means of seeking approval or feelings from others. When raising children it is important to let them know that you care about them, while still setting appropriate rules that must be enforced. Children should feel open about expressing their emotions. For extreme narcissist adults, avoiding is a good approach. However, beyond that, you can compliment the good behavior and try to help nudge them towards the healthy middle end of the spectrum. (However, that can be difficult if they are at the extreme ends.) I can see many of the characteristics on both ends of the spectrum. Getting appropriately in the middle is challenging, but valuable.
A day has 168 hours. How do you spend them? Laura Vanderkam invites you to explore your time usage. People tend to do a poor job estimating where they are spending their time. Often those that claim to work crazy amounts of hours do much less actual work. (Much of the "work" is actually personal or social behavior.) Multitasking can result in little progress in either task. However, "intelligent multipurpose behavior" can be beneficial. (For example, combining service and social work.) Little things like responding to a new email alert can end up sucking a large amount of time before you are able to get back to where you were. Trying to work form home and watch kids at the same time can be a recipe for not doing a good job at either. Finding a job that you truly enjoy makes the work less "work".
The author of Attention All Passengers has a serious ax to grind with the airline industry. He had worked there during the glorious heyday, and finds just about everything wrong that he can. Some of his issues are trivial (or represent paranoia), while others do show real issues. He is concerned that deregulation has lead to a race to the bottom. He is willing to heap praise on the airlines when they do something he agrees with. (Southwest's lack of bag fees and customer-centric nature are praised, while American's domestic maintenance is also complimented.) However, with the constant mention of the trivial, it is hard to filter out what is important.
Internal Time divides the discussion of time into 24 chapters. It presents a number of fictional and semi-factual stories of people in various "odd time" situations as it discusses how time impacts us in our lives. The human clock is almost set to 24 hours. However, there are slight differences, and the body relies on external queues (sunrise) to guide us on the daily schedule. Teenagers tend to arise later, and gradually arise earlier each year until late middle age. (Women actually start this schedule a little ahead of men.) Birds use an internal clock in order to guide their long migrations. Some people may have conditions that cause them to wake up much earlier than normal. Without sensory perceptions, it can be hard to accurately keep track of time.
Programming Interviews Exposed is one of the earliest of the genre of "programming interview books". I had read the third edition, though the fourth edition is now available. It covers the entire interview process from job search to salary negotiation and the actual interview. For coding interviews, it discusses good practices and provides some sample questions and types. However, the goal is not to provide a library of possible questions, but rather to cover some high level topics and guide the thinking process. In doing so, it does a good job of helping you to mentally prepare for the programming interview, including some of the curve balls that may be thrown.
Shawshank Redemption is a Stephen King novella that was later made in to a movie. A ton of King books have been made into movies, yet very few have been bona fide box office hits. However, they are often cheap to produce, so the low revenue may be justified by the low expenses. The story is narrated by Red, a convicted murderer who grew to know another convicted murderer, Andy, in prison. Andy was a well-to-do banker who continued to claim his innocence and refused to let prison get the best of him. He had to endure many horrible situations (which were described too graphically), but always fought through and refused to adopt the "institutionalized" mentality. He used his knowledge and skills to help the inmates and the guards (including providing account support for various scams.) Alas, the staff found him too valuable, and when evidence surfaced from another inmate that would identify the true murderer, the inmate was quickly transferred away. In the end, Andy realized he would have to help himself, and managed to carry out an escape on his own. In doing so, he never forgot his friends. The story is very engaging and hard to put down. One theme in the novella is that prison helps to make prisoners. After being institutionalized for a long period of time, people have adapted to the "rules" of prison life, no matter how harsh they are. Freedom can appear to be a new burden as it presents new challenges and new decisions that were not required while incarcerated. (Red in particular had trouble adjusting to his "new" life after gaining parole.) This contrasted significantly with Andy and his strength to avoid letting his sole get institutionalized.
Liberals met the election of Donald Trump with "fear". The author attempts to analyze her own fear as well as the roll of fear in human society and development. She had grown up in a conservative "by the bootstraps" family, and then married into judaism, adopting the social justice tenants into her life, and retaining the identity even after divorcing. 
History has been understood to some extent long before Franklin and his kit flying. There was some confusion in how it worked (with Amber and electricity seeming similar.) This audiobook presents a quick run through of the discovery and understanding of electricity. A basic understanding was used for a traveling sideshow performances. (Of course - entertainment is the first venue for new tech.) The audiobook provides dramatized voicing to help enliven the history. Unfortunately, it comes across as just a rushed recitation of facts rather than a coherent story.
When posits the thesis that "when" you do something can be as a more important than how you do it (or what you do.) Sometimes, bad timing can result in significantly different outcomes. Somebody that begins their career during a recession is likely to end up significantly behind somebody that started during an economic boom. Similarly, time of day can impact the decision making process. (Perhaps the Lucitania was sunk because the captain was not thinking well during the afternoon.) Different people have different times of peak decision making ability. Finding the time can help to make better decisions. Naps can also be very helpful in increasing productivity. (The author laments the ending of the Spanish siesta.) People like to hear the "bad news" first before hearing the good - yet we tend to preface bad news by telling the good. There are many other areas that can be helped by paying head to "when" things are done.
Oathbringer is a long book, even by Brandon Sanderson standards. The story centers around the arrival of the voidbringers, and the negative implications on society. The world consists of humans as well as other living beings with different attributes. In this universe, eye color determines social class. Even after a great upheaval that would negate any previous social standings, people would still revert back to their old ways. 
Radical Candor explores the best ways to give feedback to others in constructive ways. It uses a few different quadrants to identify types of employee trajectories as well as the means of giving feedback. "Radical Candor" is feedback given in a truthful, empathetic manner. An alternative is being blunt and mean without being empathetic. This is actually preferable to being too empathetic, but not telling people what they are doing wrong. (You may think you are being kind, but this often just postpones the big nasty confrontation and doesn't give the person the chance to change.) Employees trajectories use different axes of performance and growth. Some employees want to become excellent at what they are doing and do not want to grow to other positions, while others want to grow. Different life events can impact the phase that an employee is in. Bosses need to understand that and give appropriate feedback.
Their Eyes Were Watching God centers on the life of Janie Crawford, an African American woman who wanted to live her own life. She was raised by her grandmother Grandma, whoworked as a nanny for a white family. Janie did not realize that she herself has not white until she couldn't find herself in a picture of the kids playing. Even so, she did have some "white" features which would play a roll in her later life. Grandma had grown up as a slave and lived through the civil war. She longed to have the ability to sit on the porch and do nothing and desired that of her granddaughter. She wanted to make sure Janie was properly married off soon after she "Became a woman". Janie was soon married to her first husband. She had hoped to love him, but their relationship never grew. He wanted her to be able to work hard and help on the farm. One day while he was out another man appeared that showed ambition and wanted to treat her "right". She eventually left with him and went to a "negro city". This man would go to become the mayor and they would run the store and live the life of luxury. However, Janie missed that chance to talk with common folk. After her husband died, she met a younger man named "Teacake". They would eventually get married and spend some time living in the Everglades working as harvesting crew. This marriage was much more down to earth. They were respected working class and made friends with many people. During this phase, she encounters a "white black" lady who respects Janie because of her paler skin color and "whiter" features and talks down to the more crude darker skinned blacks like Teacake. Janie doesn't buy into this argument. One day a hurricane comes through. They ignore the warning signs, and then make a mad dash to flea the rising lake at the last minute. In the process a dog bites Teacake. This leads to him coming down with Rabies and going mad. He raises a gun to shoot Janie. She has another gun and ends up killing him. She is acquitted in the trial, with many of the black audience muttering that a black woman or a white can get away with anything.
What is time? That is a question the Alan Burdick tries to answer in Why Time Flies. Dictionaries often include a somewhat circular definition of time. We know what it is and we can sense its passage, yet it doesn't seem to be a physical sense like touch or smell. It feels that time passes slower when we our younger, but then speeds up as we get older. Some studies have "proven" this, yet there have also been flaws in the studies. "New" events do appear to take longer than repeated events. This may be do to the more resources that are spent processing the newness than are needed for reprocessing the old. The brain also does a lot of "tricks" to make the real world appear as we expect it. When there is a small delay between the time you touch a key and the character appears on a screen, the brain correlates those with being instantaneous events. If a character then appears instantly upon keypress, the brain will interpret that as happened. "Time" may pass in an orderly manner. However, their are a lot of "tricks" that the brain pulls in our interpretation of the passing of events. This book does a good job in investigating many of these tricks and pointing out that the science behind time is still in its infant stage.
In Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole, eleven-year-old Stella Rodriquez has been struggling with the loss of her father. She attempts to visit Carl Sagan at Nasa in order to have sounds of her father put on the "golden record". (The book takes place in the 1970s.) However, a small black hole follows her home. She gradually housebreaks the black hole. In the process, she discovers that anything eaten by the black hole is "erased" from ever having existed. She decides to use this to her advantage to remove all the "difficult" things form her life - including the memories of her father. Alas, her new puppy accidentally enters the black hole. She decides to try to rescue him. In the process she finds that bizarre things happen to things in the black hole (like the discarded sweaters coming "alive" and treating her diary as a religious text.) Through this process, she finally comes to peace with her father's death and her relationship with her family.
Getting to Yes presents "principled negotiation" as a negotiating strategy. Key to the strategy is a focus on interests and objective criteria rather than specific positions. Often "positional bargaining" can bring other sides to dig in and attempt to save face with their position. Instead, a principled negotiator will attempt to separate the person from the problem and acknowledge the common interests and let the solution suggest itself. Key to carrying out the negotiation is knowledge of "Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement". This differs from a "bottom line" in that it allows things to be adapted based on the result of negotiation. New ideas may be discovered during the process of negotiating that lead to solutions that were not intended earlier. Getting to Yes is filled with anecdotes of successful negotiating in action. Keeping your cool and resisting the urge to go into attack mode is an important part of the process. As the opposite party feels respected, they are less likely to come out with guns blazing. They can become more of a willing partner rather than an adversary. However, to succeed, they must also feel that the end result is valuable to them. If you come up with a result that is too beneficial towards you, then you may find yourself operating from a weaker standing in the future.
Pale Fire is written as a scholarly annotated poem by a dead poet. The "author" (Charles Kinbote) is a scholar neighbor of the dead poet, Shade. It consists of an introduction by the author, the 999 line poem and the commentary of the poem. The introduction gives you a clue that there is something else going on here. The "author" is very full of himself, and feels overly impressed that he is friends with Shade. The poem itself is a very basic, juvenile work. Nothing that would be really "good" on its own. 
After the discussions of Henry James in 
At times Moby Dick reads as a history of all things whaling. There are long descriptions of the different types of whales, the accuracy of whale's portrayal in art, the common procedures of whaling vessels and more. (He was convincing in saying that the whale should be considered a fish, even though it has lungs. This goes against are modern way of classifying, but is not made in ignorance, so much as a "sea-centric" means of grouping. 
Ace the Programming Interview is the "coding interview" book that always seems to be available at the library. I have never seen it recommended by a big tech company for interview prep. It was written by a European and has more of a British Focus. It also feels dated.