There are many literary devices that can both help and hinder communication. Using a language that the audience can easily understand is helpful. Needlessly defining words or defining too much can created problems. (A scientist may frequently use an abbreviation in their work, but a reader would not know what it meant.) Excessive use of flowery language can make a work tedious. Picking words that sound closer to their meaning can make reading more enjoyable.
The English language does not have a governing body. Proper English is the language that people understand. Many pedantic rules or just interpretations by a few vocal people. If you are writing to an audience that is concerned about these rules, follow them. If not, there is no need. Some of these rules, like prohibitions on split infinitives came about by comparing English to Latin. Other arose when the due to poor understanding of grammar itself. Many "rules" from the sticklers will make language sound unduly formal and stilted. There are other common mistakes that do interfere with understanding. Poor punctuation can confuse meaning. (Unfortunately, the rules of punctuation - especially quotes and commas - can result in confusing language.)
The Sense of Style does a good job of focussing on the proper use of style. Pedantic rules often make writing worse. Understanding the audience is key to success. Looking up a word or a rule is the best way to understand whether or not it should be used. Some "poor writing" has near universal approval. Others may be commonly used, but are are obviously malapropisms. The acceptance of stylistic rules is always evolving. A writer can use style guides to help focus a style, but must continue to focus on the current audience.
Prayer of Jabez is a brief Christian self-help book. Jabez is a minor character in the old testament. He did not have an easy life. However, he was able to conquer territory for Israel. The author uses this experience for people to follow. It is encouraged that people pray for their personal gain. God is willing to grant many blessings and it us up to people to ask for them. Even business people can pray to help their business grow in righteousness. There are many examples given of Christians who sought out opportunity to help others and build up God's kingdom. The Jabez prayer helped to focus the effort and lead to great achievement. 
Imposter Syndrome seems really dialed into Silicon Valley, but "the 101"? The book centers on a company (Tangerine) that feels like Facebook with a dash of Google and Yahoo. The founder/CEO is mentioned, but has a very minor role in the story. The focus is instead on the COO, a Russian immigrant woman who is the perfect strong female executive. Oh, and it just so happens she is also a spy, part of an elaborate espionage scheme. She utilizes her special access to anybody's account to pass off information to the Russians. A low-level female Chinese engineer at the company discovers suspicious activity and eventually discovers who it was. She ends up getting connected with the feds and helps implicate the COO, but loses her job in the process. In the end, she gets a job at a startup, while the COO takes a "leave" only to come back (and offer the Chinese engineer her job back if she wants it.)
I listened to Train Dreams. Then I read detailed summary. Then I listened to it again. I still didn't seem to recognize it from the summary. (Luckily, it was a short book.) Some of the "key events" seem to just glide through in passing. The book centers around a man who worked on the railroads a century ago. He lived up in remote parts of the northwest. They helped build bridges and dish out punishment to people that did bad things. He saw "freaks" come by in circus shows. He was married, but had the family die. He remained single. It is almost a novel in the form of poetry. Despite being short, it is fairly dense. While it seemed to be an interesting setting, the content just did not do much for me.
From the outset, The Ocean at the End of the Lane reads like a memoir. The author appears to be recalling events from his childhood. There seem to be some traumatic events that occur, including bad babysitters. Then things start to get weird. The babysitter starts to exhibit Roald Dahl level of meanness. She also has a knack for intuiting any attempt to escape and to top it off has an affair with the Dad. Then it turns out that she is not just a mean person, but a demonic being. Luckily, the new person down the street has good mystical abilities. They narrator is able to be saved and go on to live a normal life. 
A bunch of teenagers are at a remote summer camp that is also desired by oil companies for shale production. They do a bunch of vulgar teenage things. It is set in the Reagan/Bush years with an undercurrent of Berkeley idealism conflicting with business progress. Most of the characters come across as "brats". After the camp experience, they discover that "camp" people are different than they are in the real world.
Of Mice and Men is a short book written about itinerant farm workers. Lennie and George travel together. George is the "brains". Lenny is not quite all there mentally, but he is big and strong. He is attracted to soft things. Unfortunately, he has a bad habit of accidentally killing soft animals that he touches. This gets worse when he accidentally strangles a woman. He retreats to his known hiding place when he is chased by a mob. George later puts him out of his misery.
The author is a very successful Silicon Valley businesswoman. One day while they were on a vacation, her husband died suddenly in a hotel gym. This book is the story of how she went through the process with additional content from the co-author. One key part was finding people that have experience something similar. Often friends will be reluctant to provide support in challenging times, thinking that they are interfering. These are times that people often need the most social interaction. However, everyone is different. Some people need to cope by going right back to work. Others need a long time off. Regardless of the immediate approach, there is a need to eventually move on.
Joy Division had a brief life as a band before the singer, Ian Curtis, committed suicide. Despite the brief life, they have achieved a cult status and were very influential to many other bands. The remaining members of the band continued on as New Order and had success of their own.
The end of The Premonition drives home the big problem with our current public health system. In the mid-1970s the US public health authorities anticipated a deadly swine flu outbreak. They chose to institute a max vaccination campaign. Unfortunately, the local health infrastructure was not up to the task and was only able to vaccinate a fraction of the population. Some of those vaccinated died. Even though many of the deaths were not related to the vaccine, the presence of deaths together with the no-show of the deadly outbreak lead to a piloring of the health officials. Today, public health policy tends to be led in a cautious manner. People are concerned more about protecting their image. Government appointments are often made with regard to "optics" rather than expertise. Altogether, this leads to slow and inadequate reactions. Actions that avoid a deadly epidemic will be judged harshly if a few people had died. Meanwhile, positive improvement after a deadly epidemic are more likely to be praised.
Minor Feelings is part memoir, part racial studies and part biography of a past figure. One thing that sticks out to me is that most works attempting to portray the life of an underappreciated minority are typically written from the viewpoint of somebody in a fairly "non-standard" position. The author grew up in a west-coast Korean family, studied art and writing in the midwest and became a published writer and poet. Her parents had a rag-to-riches story of hard-working immigrants. 
This was one of Kurt Cobain's favorite novels. The story centers around a man with a great sense of smell living in 18th century France. He is orphaned at a young age and notices his gift for smell at a relatively young age. He smells a girl and murders her so that nobody else could have her smell. He realizes his great olfactory ability and apprentices himself to a perfumist. He also realizes that he does not have a smell. Later he decides to create a perfect smell. He kills a couple dozen girls to get what is needed. The people are distraught by the murders and eventually capture him. His execution is to be a great spectacle. He unleashes his "perfect smell" and everyone feels he is innocent as they get wrapped up in a hedonistic orgy. He finds this unfulfilling and decides to unleash his smell as he is walking among some low-life. They rip him apart, ending his life.
Piranesi is a weird book. It centers around a character that is living in a labyrinth. He has very little understanding of the world around, but a great deal of empathy for people. There are numerous "current events" that happen in our recent past as well as books and bits of history. At one point, I had thought I slipped into a historical "how this book came about" section. (Nope - it was just part of the book.) Characters are often given a numerical label or called something like "old one". It is an interesting story of a different mind.
The voice in our had is regularly chattering with us. Sometimes it is telling us how good we are. Other times it is making us worry. It may rehash past events or do many things. Often this chatter can negatively impact us. An example is given of a promising baseball pitcher who mentally fell apart and could not pitch on target any more. The mental "chatter" did him in. Being able to harness the inner voice can help us to better control our experiences.
Habits are what create us. Good and bad habits are relative to what we would like to accomplish. We often do things in response to the reward we receive. If we make it easy to do the "good habits", we are more likely to follow through. We can associate them with other things we already do or find ways to make them useful. Doing a small thing repeatedly can produce results over the long run. If we are trying to improve a skill, we must also work on making the habit more challenging over time. For "bad" habits, it helps to create ways to avoid it. This may be via negative association or the help of others.
The Big Sleep is a "mystery" book that is more concerned with the process than the conclusion. The detective is brought in to do some work for the "General". In the process of investigating some blackmail, he uncovers multiple murders and many other crime operations. He is the principled, loyal detective who is going to get the job done for his small fee. He has little faith in the police solving crimes. He also freely navigates the underbelly of society without actively being part of it. While he does uncover various crimes, those were not the subject of his investigation, so he feels he has not earned his commission. It is a true "smarter than life detective" and an interesting portrayal of old Los Angeles.
The Code Breaker explores the developments in gene editing technology through the life of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna. She helped develop CRISPR to edit genes. Others helped apply this to various life-forms including humans. There is plenty of infighting and maneuvering in the process. Science is about collaboration and the pursuit of knowledge. However, there is also the goal to be "first" and take the credit. Some behind the scenes manipulation is often done to make sure certain papers and patents take priority. Patents and commercialization also lead to other shenanigans that interfere with the pure pursuit of knowledge. The Covid-19 epidemic helped science move back to a more collaborative approach. Research was shared in real-time and people were able to quickly work on new tools. The new vaccines are enabled through past research that allows more direct manipulation of genetic sequences.
Think Again is another good book on debunking psychological "junk". People tend to adopt beliefs and hold tight to them. Contrary information often does little to change these entrenched beliefs. Opposing arguments may even help them build up the beliefs.
This book is part narrative and part laundry list of actions based on Gottman's relationship research. Successful marriages don't avoid conflict. However, they know how to deal with it. Couples need to identify areas that are negotiable and those that are not. Spend time on the areas where benefit can be achieved. There are also key areas in which men and women often differ. These seem to be present throughout different cultures. Males tend to take a stronger role of authority. Women tend to value cleaning more and are more concerned about feelings. There are many other things that tend to be over-represented in one gender (though that they are applicable to all couples or individuals.)
Iceland is an interesting place. It is located "in the middle of nowhere", part way between Europe and America. It is really far north and has extreme differences in winter and summer light. It has only been inhabited for a millenia. The descendents of the original inhabitants still remain there. While there has always been interaction with other people, it has not been frequent or deep, thus leading to a fairly homogeneous population. The weather is generally cool. It does not get as cold as inland arctic locations, and rarely gets hot. 
With the title and subtitle, I was expecting something fairly inflammatory. What I was not expecting was for such an emphasis on racial inequality. This book continues the popular scheme of using the tools of western civilization to say that everything that western civilization has brought us is bad. The old "we are so awesome because we can say that we are evil" argument.
The Art of War is one of the oldest works that is still read today. Sun Tzu provides a number of warfare principles that are at times very specific to the day, but also very general. Different terrains (such as salt marshes) have different considerations. Sometimes the best way to defeat an enemy is by encouraging their overconfidence. Your army may fight better when they are far from home, and thus find it more difficult to desert. Spies are very important, yet they must be well vetted. It is also important to show everyone that the leaders follow rules also. (There is even an example of a leader that nearly beheaded himself.) While we don't engage in siege warfare today, most of the general principles are still applicable.
Amazon has been closely tied to many of the changes in society today. The big coastal cities have boomed. Meanwhile, small town America is in bad shape. Most well-paying industrial jobs have long since left. The new economy jobs tend to focus on the already well-endowed big cities. (Tech workers prefer to go to cities that already have a large number of tech jobs.) Local retail has also been moving away from small towns.
Food can be truly addicting. However, the nature of addiction has many different facets. Our food preferences also start when we are young. For many people in the US, the "native food" is the junk fast food that we have grown up with. He have had this food marketed to us from our infancy and continue to prefer it. Some people are much more susceptible to it than others. To some people, a simple ad for McDonalds can trigger the craving. Similar to many other addictions, it is the longing for food that drives it - a longing which can sometimes not be fully satisfied by consuming the food.