Jekyll2024-01-19T10:52:20-08:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/feed.xmlKaito KikuchiQuantitative MicrobiologistKaito KikuchiOpen Circuits2023-03-15T00:00:00-07:002023-03-15T00:00:00-07:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/open-circuits<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/Open_Circuits.jpg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" /></p>
<p>I got this book after seeing it recommended on Twitter, and it’s a great coffee table book for anyone interested in electronics. The book is a collection of more than 130 electrical components, ranging from simple carbon film resistors to a smartphone camera. Each component is accompanied by a detailed explanation of the design, and the book is beautifully illustrated with cross-section photographs of the circuits.</p>
<p>While marveling at the ingenuity and function that goes into each tiny device, I realized how strikingly similar it is to how I feel learning about biology — except that every iteration is documented and the human intent that went into the design is explainable! I especially enjoyed the chapter on electromechanics, where the cross-section photographs really brought the form-to-function relationship to life. I never imagined that a toggle switch contained a metal see-saw, but now it seems so obvious!</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance2022-07-19T00:00:00-07:002022-07-19T00:00:00-07:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/zen_and_the_art_of_motorcycle_maintenance<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/zenartmotorcyclemaintenance.jpeg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" /></p>
<p>I read this book over a 11.5h flight from Munich to San Diego. I say this because I don’t think I would have been able to finish this tome outside of the distraction free zone that is a long haul flight, at least in the timespan where the contents would be fresh in my mind. I don’t mean that the book is boring — it’s actually a very cleverly structured book that intersperses a motorcycle cross-country journey with very intense philosophical discussions. It’s just a very long book about serious material that demands concentration from the reader: concentration that has mostly left my brain in the age of push notifications and endless doomscrolling.</p>
<p>I thoroughly enjoyed the exploration of Quality as the force that makes life worth living, the glimmer of brilliance in a deft twist of a skilled welder, or the quiet interest that a seasoned mechanic would train onto his motorcycle. This is a book that came out in 1974, but its ponderings on technology and the human experience feels pertinent as ever in the smartphone age.</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksThe Culture Code2022-07-10T00:00:00-07:002022-07-10T00:00:00-07:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/culturecode<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/culture_code.jpeg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" /></p>
<p>I read this book after <a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/loonshots/">Loonshots</a>, and while they both talk about similar themes (how to make better organizations), and even use the same case studies (Bell Labs, DARPA red balloon challenge, etc), I found myself liking TCC better. Anecdotal stories are told more organically, and the take-home morals are dispensed with more clarity. I’m excited to become a better listener and facilitator using what I’ve learned.</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksRed Brick Black Mountain White Clay2022-07-01T00:00:00-07:002022-07-01T00:00:00-07:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/redbrickblackmountainwhiteclay<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/redbrickblackmountainwhiteclay.jpg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" /></p>
<p>I picked up this book as it touched on two central interests of mine: pottery, and western North Carolina, where my husband is from and his parents still live. Part documentary, part essay, Chris Benfey chronicles a deeply personal search for family history across generations and continents while diving into the various artists that his search comes across. The result is a delightful amalgamation of art history and exploration, always centered around the human and vividly described.</p>
<p>I myself had spent the first four months of the pandemic in my in-laws house, digging clay in their backyard and refining it for later pottery use. Benfey’s story of Josiah Wedgwood financing the search for white clay in Cherokee land, not too far from where I was, therefore felt extremely tangible to the point where I could smell the clay from the writing. This is a book that makes me want to write.</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksLoonshots2022-06-24T00:00:00-07:002022-06-24T00:00:00-07:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/loonshots<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/loonshots.jpeg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" /></p>
<p>A book on organizational tactics to prevent the stifling of innovation in favor of office politics, Loonshots is an easy read with many vividly regaled tales of successful and unsuccessful examples of innovative ideas within a team of people. The central thesis of the book is that the optimal number of people in an organization can be modeled as a phase transition, much like in percolation theory (which was the topic of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30056004/">one of my grad school papers</a>).</p>
<p>Because this book is intended for a non-technical audience, the main text goes very light on the model details, although the extensive footnotes go into more detail. I was left wanting for some model validation using empirical data, rather than plugging in handpicked hyperparameters designed to guide the results, seemingly towards a preferred outcome on the behalf of the author.</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksこの骨董が、アナタです。2022-03-23T00:00:00-07:002022-03-23T00:00:00-07:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/konokottogaanatadesu<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/konokottou.jpeg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" />
骨董好きの著者が掘り出し物というイメージに踊らされてあちこちの骨董商を右往左往する様子が生き生きと描かれ、読んでいるうちに自分もその場にいて一緒に一喜一憂している気持ちになってくる。とくに三稿にわたって評価が急転する李朝白磁ツボのくだりは、骨董趣味の心理をよく表現していると感じる。</p>
<p>その一方で650万円をポンと出して良寛の古筆(真筆かは結局わからずじまい)を買ったり、偽物の酒器にあわせて700万円使っていたエピソードなど、いまは考えられないバブリーさもまた面白い。タイトルは持参した徳利を前に白洲正子に言われた一言ということで、在りし日の骨董好きコミュニティの様子も垣間見える。サラッと読める一冊。</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksA Psalm For The Wild Built2022-03-02T00:00:00-08:002022-03-02T00:00:00-08:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/a-psalm-for-the-wild-built<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/psalm_wild_built.jpeg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" />
I picked up this book somewhat randomly, encouraged by its pretty cover and backcover reviews that mentioned words like “optimistic”, “kind”, and “felt like a warm cup of tea”. I can confirm that all of the above were very much true and reading <em>Psalm</em> was one of the most therapeutic things I’ve done in a long time.</p>
<p>Like many others, I had my own share of burnout and soul-searching during the past two pandemic years, and the protagonist Dex’s quest to find “purpose” in life resonated deeply with me. Oh by the way, <em>Psalm</em> was the first book that I read with a gender nonbinary protagonist and I enjoyed how much it was a nonissue in the storytelling (one of the many ways the world is “an optimistic vision”). But back to my point, this book felt particularly poignant as I prepare to defend my PhD and move beyond. This book reminded me that we don’t need our work to be <em>enough</em>, it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. That we are allowed to just <em>live</em>.</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksThis Is How You Lose the Time War2022-02-25T00:00:00-08:002022-02-25T00:00:00-08:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/thisishowyoulosethetimewar.jpeg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" />
This book is about two time-traveling superagents that initially try to kill each other but fall in love and rail against the system (?). The question mark is because the majority of the book consists of love letters that <em>ooze</em> with such angsty-edgy-teenager energy that the plot never sat with me long enough to grasp. The two superagents are female, so I do appreciate the gay scifi angle. However, that does <em>not</em> absolve the authors of the continuous barrage of “romance” that ranged from very basic to absurdly childish, while simultaneously having zero emotional resonance. Not a mean feat, this.</p>
<p>I guess it was also wrong to expect this book to deliver a believable time travel story, a genre that I consider to be the literary equivalent of communism: sounds very cool, but never executed without morphing into a dreadful monster. There were occasional hints of brilliance, like the idea of future AI and biological civilizations weaving together past timelines to lead to their own, but these were never explored beyond surface level and just got buried by meters of inane posturing.</p>
<p>The fact that this book has two authors is also more of a gimmick than a feature. Their writing styles were not distinct enough to bring real personalities to the characters, but also not seamless enough to avoid a sense of incongruity. Again, cool idea, poorly executed.</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All booksHyperion2022-01-30T00:00:00-08:002022-01-30T00:00:00-08:00https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/hyperion<p><span style="color:gray"><a href="https://www.kaitokikuchi.com/reading/">← All books</a></span></p>
<p><img src="/images/reading/hyperion.jpeg" alt="image-left" width="450px" class="align-left" />
Wikipedia tells me that this is a cult classic, although I must confess that I didn’t know about it until late last year. It has an interesting structure with each chapter told through a different character, much in the tradition of <em>The Canterbury Tales</em> or <em>The Decameron</em>, gradually filling out the world setting and character backstories. Also kinda like some JRPGs. This also enabled the author to mix in a variety of different story styles, which enriched the world building and character personalities.</p>
<p>I found the ending quite depressing, and didn’t make me want to continue the series, but <em>Hyperion</em>’s strongly visual storytelling is undoubtedly ripe for screen adaptation (which seems to be happening sometime??).</p>Kaito Kikuchi← All books