What are you reading this week?
20 points by vlnn
20 points by vlnn
Also what were you reading? What are you planning to read next?
I've finished Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle" and it's really good. Rereading The Mikado Method left me with same opinion the it's great technique badly described.
My next big book is The Memory Code by Lynne Kelly. My next big "computer" book is The Powerful Python by Aaron Maxwell (I hope it will make me less of quickly-let's-get-the-shit-together and more of quickly-let's-get-the-shit-right).
Meta comment: I think a less frequent cadence would make sense for this question.
Thought the same when the first post showed up. I think this could be a monthly post. Would be a bit hard to find on the front page, but I suppose that’s ok.
I hear you. My intention was to revive the type of posts I got so much interesting stuff from, and it was weekly post. Maybe it should be either montly or fortnightly (if there's such a word), and this will help people to share more interesting (and finished!) books. Still it's hard, as I'm literally thriving in those comments.
Let's do it twice a month first, and write me again, if it's still too much.
Not a book, but I've been reading a lot about ledgers, accounting and revenue recognition standards. Trying to push some changes in my team to be more principled with how we handle money.
The part of my brain that likes bringing order to things in code loves ledgers too.
My peanut brain can barely keep 3 bits in working memory, so I always try very hard to simplify as much as possible. Ledgers are good tools for that. I'm actually exploring tigerbeetle as underlying store
I really love tigerbeetle. If way more than I need for anything personal. I could use it at work if someone offered it hosted.
In order of descending priority:
I also just finished Foundation book 1 recently, read it in a week or so. Did not expect it to be so engaging! Turns out that, besides all the cigars that they're apparently still smoking deep into the far future, sci-fi back then is not so different from sci-fi today :)
Books I acquired, mostly recently, and look forward to reading (and which I'll probably bump up in the priority list once I start), in no particular order:
It's pretty likely that these two lists will not be finished before the end of this year :)
Trying to read "The Joy of Abstraction" by Eugenia Cheng. I love the book and tone but I'm struggling when trying to read after a work day since the book goes into math areas I know nothing about. Next one should be "How to Solve It" by Pólya.
You're not the one with that one — I even bought the paper book, but never got farther the first 100 pages. Still great red book!
I will probably get close to finishing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for a local book club. I watched the movie a few years (a decade?) ago, but I'm enjoying the book so much more.
Reading Surround Sound by Mark Kermode and Jenny Nelson. Probably going to interleave it with Lives of Bitter Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
I thought Children of Time was good. I really enjoyed Alien Clay. I hadn’t heard of Lives of Bitter Ruin (Rain?)
Yeah, sorry Rain, not Ruin. It is the latest in his Tyrant Philosophers series which is about a rationalist empire in a magical world. Alongside Alien Clay it is one of the best bits of fiction I’ve read about revolutionary politics I’ve read in a long time.
Centennial. I had never heard of Michener before this year, and I’ve basically been alternating between his novels and some shorter reads all year.
Before that I read Surreal Numbers, which was… sort of trying to be more than just reading proofs but basically just reading proofs, and Moonrise, a sci-fi short story collection which was mixed but occasionally interesting.
Next up… I need something non-Michener again. Probably nonfiction. Maybe Joseph Anton? Or something lighter…
Never heard of Centennial. It sounds strange but intriguing. I might have to check that one out…
It's great but Hawaii is even better if you're intrigued by the style. Centennial has a frame story, so it doesn't literally start with the formation of the earth (though it does get there), and I love that Hawaii does. It's a bold start and he makes it work.
Reading at work: Working effectively with legacy code. Read this 10 years ago, thought it was pure gold, re-reading it now I think it just has some good ideas. It has Java/C++ as the main languages, and a lot of time is spent working with (and sometimes dealing with) inheritance. I'd love to see a new edition of this book but with Go/Rust as the main languages, so that more time can be spent on something other than inheritance. If anyone has any recommendations for a similar kind of book -- on how to dig out of a legacy codebase -- I'd be happy to hear them!
Study reading: Psychodynamic psychotherapy : a clinical manual, Second edition. I'm hoping that this will make my therapy sessions go smoother, and so far I think it is working. This manual explicitly abandons jargonisms (no more "id, ego, super-ego"), and it puts a lot of effort in spelling out things that some readers might consider obvious, both of which make the book a relatively easy (if long) read.
Fun reading: Complications : a surgeon's notes on an imperfect science, someone recommended it in a previous "What are you reading this week?" thread, so far it has been an exciting read!
Currently reading through The Witcher, halfway through the third book. It’s great!
Honestly, though, I’m just finding ways to cope until the next Scott Lynch or Brandon Sanderson book release. AFAIK, there are two Gentleman Bastard novellas in the publishers hands…
Wait you finished the latest Sanderson novel? That volume is gigantic!
🙈 I have a problem.
I savored Wind and Truth for around three weeks, and then Isles of the Emberdark for two. I assume you're talking about the former, but the latter came out in ~July and is also great!
What did you think of wind and truth? I'm a total Sanderson devotee, and will definitely read every single volume of the stormlight archive. But having read most of Sanderson's books, I am definitely starting to see the tropes and chatacter styles that he favours.
My biggest gripe is that he sometimes holds back certain important flashbacks until very late in the book. Sure, when the flashback is part of some character development, it makes sense to time it right. But some flashbacks are not necessarily tied to character development, and just held back artiificially to create suspense. In those cases, I don't mind too much, as not knowing is half the fun. But I also feel a bit tricked at the same time...
I loved it, but I'm too easy too please to have worthwhile feedback haha. I was lucky to have gotten a ticket to DragonSteel Nexus, so was in the launch party crowd. In a away, though, isn't the trajectory of any fiction book artificial suspense?
Brandon talks about some of the common complaints in this podcast, paired with some of his own regrets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdpzciIt29k (it contains spoilers for any passerbys who aren't caught up yet). Maybe some of them resonate with yours. :) While most of my devotee status comes from liking his books, I became a bigger fan after seeing him engage with fans, articulate his work, and so on.
isn't the trajectory of any fiction book artificial suspense?
It is! And one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Sandeson is because, for most of his books, this holding back of info is barely artificial at all. In fact, most of the time I feel like it's naturally woven into the narrative of the story. It's only in the fifth stormlight book that I feel he dropped the ball a bit. Or I misread stuff or missed parts of what was actually going on; this has happened to me before and probably will keep happening.
In the same vein, I feel that the ending of Sanderson's books are usually inevitable, yet I rarely see them coming. It's qualities like these that will keep me reading his books for years to come if he can keep it up :)
Brandon talks about some of the common complaints in this podcast, paired with some of his own regrets
Thanks for the recommendation, that looks interesting!
That’s very fair! I started relistening to the podcast a bit, and he talks about how he’s thinking about flashback timing pretty early on.
And yeah, no books emotionally grip me toward the end as much as his unfortunately. It’s the feeling I crave now hahaha.
The Language of Deception, Weaponizing Next Generation AI. It's actually a primer on cybersecurity, but the author weaves in the latest in cyberattack techniques. (I'm a systems programmer so it's nice to escape C/assembly and think like a high-level hacker for a while.)
How do you even start reading? (Recreational reading, that is, not science & engineering books.)
I used to like reading back in high school, but most of book recs came from friends and acquaintances. One multi-year depression later, I forgot everything, forgot what my taste is (if I even had one), and I don't know where to start again.
I have some random names in my todo pile, sci-fi mostly, but every time I try to pick something up, I feel like it's not "serious" enough and mucking about with random light reading won't make me any closer to being "well-read" nor advance my understanding of literature as a field. What's the common advice here?
In my opinion, before you even think about advancing your understanding of literature, you need to get your love (or at least enjoyment) of reading back. I'm very familiar with the idea that reading certain books is a "waste of time", but it's really counter-productive.
Rebuild the habit and love of reading by giving yourself time everyday, or at least regularly. What you read doesn't matter, pick something that seems enjoyable to you and start reading.
Occasionally I read a book that I don’t like and don’t want to pick up but don’t also want to abandon, and I go months without reading at all. Usually re-reading an old favorite book resets whatever that is and reminds me that reading is just fun.
It’s tough to find new books though. I regularly ask friends and co-workers for recommendations and it’s so much more effective than random internet recommendations or (shudder) Goodreads. People have very different tastes, and being able to have a conversation about the book is a great way to see if it fits yours.
"cahokia jazz", very good alt-history police procedural novel set in part of the world i didn't know very much about.
Nearly finished:
Started:
Next up:
(I tend to have several books in-flight at any given time. Also I have a lot of lost (reading) time to make up for!)
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Second book in the Culture Series Introduction to Systems Thinking
I'm halfway through the "Commonweal" novels. It's a bit tough going as the author, Graydon Saunders, tends to write in quite a heavy style. But the very sciency magic makes it a worthy read for me.
Reading…? Long form fiction doesn’t really take book form for me anymore. Finishing season 1 of Legend of the Galactic Heroes and getting into Critical Role with their fourth campaign.
I did start The Power Broker which is a stirring read so far.
Also started leafing through Effective Rust.
Coq' Art. Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin.
Polished Ruby Programming, for the local Ruby meetup book club.
Raising Securely Attached Kids. Parenting books have been hit or miss for me, but my older kid is now entering toddlerhood, so I need all the help I can get!
Trying to get through Harlan Ellison's Greatest Hits. It's a treasure trove of sci-fi. I've only got through 1 short story and I found it kind of underwhelming, but it's most likely because the idea presented is quite simple / not novel to my brain.
Here's what I'm reading this week.
I recently finished "Nettle and Bone" and "Hemlock and Silver" by Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher. Both easy to read fairy-tale-esque fantasy reimagining. I returned to "Indigenous Continent", which I've been reading in small chunks between lighter books. Continent's thesis has reframed what little I knew about early colonization of the Americas but the text is ... thorough ... and I find myself drifting away to other books easily.