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Slashdot Asks: What Book(s) Are You Reading This Month?
We have not run book recommendations and book discussion posts for some time. So here it goes: What's a book -- or books -- are you reading this month? Additionally, what's a book you finished recently that you found insightful, or funny, or both. (The latter request comes from a reader.) Leave your recommendation and any additional notes in the comments section below.
Everybody who engineers or manages engineers needs to read this book every few years.
"The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brooks.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Picked "The Billionaire Raj" by James Crabtree, a former Mumbai bureau chief of Financial Times who used to live in India. For nearly a century leading up to its independence in 1947, India operated under a system of British governance known as the Raj, (Sanskrit for kingdom or rule.) Then, more or less until the introduction of economic liberalization in 1991, the country stagnated under a planned economy whose overwhelming regulatory demands were described as the License Raj. The book illustrates how India has come under the grip of a new but no less troublesome regime. In a nation no longer at the mercy of imperial administrators and maharajahs or petty bureaucrats, a new system has grown up, and the emerging superrich are firmly in charge. Pretty fascinating book if you want to learn more about India, which is increasingly becoming important for Silicon Valley companies, and take you mind off of the US politics headlines.
Are:
"Carpet Diem" by Justin Lee Anderson
(The Chronicles of Breed) "Dangerous to Know", "Tooth and Claw" and "Something Wicked" by K.T. Davies.
I'd say Carpet Diem would appeal to fans of Douglas Adams for the humour, and perspective on life.
The Chronicles of Breed books are the sort of humour that Deadpool brings to bear, though I'd say has a fair bit more insightfulness than Deadpool about life.
All of those are well worth a look.
I read 18 volumes of C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series in 54 days. That's about ~7,000 pages. A fast paced story that never bogs down about aliens, first contact and languages. Volume 19 just came out but I haven't read it yet.
I just finished this series, and each of them were among the most original sci-fi books that I've read in years. That is hard to pull off with three longish books, but the author is full of great ideas.
- The Pun Also Rises (not a typo; yes, it's about puns)
- The Great American Novel by William Carlos Williams
- Thanks, but It's Not for Us - a book on writing craft
- Drinking with Dead Drunks by Elaine Ambrose and A.K. Turner
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Current:
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts
So far so good... very insightful into how we think and act.
Up Next:
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character
Looking forward to this because he's such a great figure.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This is a tale of someone making $100 million during the 1929 stock market crash.
Imagine having enough cash to pay 100,000 people to work for you for nearly 3 years.
This day, that would be about $15 billion.
by Don Eyles, about the "development of software for the Apollo program". This book contains far more technical details than is the norm, and the tone is that of an actual engineer rather than a biographer/editor.
I find fiction to be a waste of my time - why read about made-up stuff based on someones thoughts about things that never happened and never will, when there are so many great books about what actually happened and how it happened, what is happening right now and why, and what science tells us can actually happen in the future ?
Even amongst factual books, I find SO many that are so badly written that while being fascinated by what they are about, I cannot read them because they are just full of bad grammar and plain bad writing.
Many publishing companies should be ashamed of what they put their name on.
Reading now: Smugglers Blues by Richard Stratton, the well-written (!) autobiography of a marijuana smuggler.
"Lost in Math", by Sabrine Hossenfelder.
By Max Hastings.
Fascinating, but its so tall that it's slightly awkward to hold it open with one hand, which I find myself doing a lot because I'm referencing things or looking up word definitions on my phone.
I had the good fortune of visiting Powell's City of Books for the first time in years in August and I've been working very slowly (much more slowly than I normally go) through the pile of books I got there.
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