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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.
Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger. With respect to my heritage this is an account by someone on "the other side" in WW1. Always worth getting a different perspective.
Nullius in verba
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.
Reading: Paul Anderson, Starfarers
Just completed and found funny: Part 4 (of 4) of the complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. When compared to most of the recycled and utterly unfunny stuff on the funny pages these years, his cartoons are/were a breath of fresh air.
* The Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence
* Lyonesse by Jack Vance
* The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
* The Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher
* The Fall of Gondolin by JRR Tolkien
I can recommend all of these, except for The Fall of Gondolin. It's not really up to Tolkien's best standard, but still worth reading for fans like me.
The Pirate Planet, a Doctor Who story by Douglas Adams, novelized by James Goss. Captures good old Douglas to a great extent and intermixes with the good Doctor himself. A pleasurable commuter read.
The Joy of Linux
A Gourmet Guide To Open Source
https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Lin...
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Really liked Using FreeDOS from the FreeDOS folks. Kind of a blast from the past in there about old DOS programs, and its cool to see this favorite old OS also-ran still hanging around. It's for free as an EPUB or PDF, but there's a bound print copy too.
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.
I've read 4/5th of it at this point, I'll probably finish it this weekend. It's a beautiful nice fantasy story. No need to have read any of the other Discworld novels, either.
It's the story of a young apprentice priest in a extremely religious society, who meets the actual god of that society. The god has just re-incarnated into a small tortoise, and has almost no godlike powers left. And, the little tortoise can only be heard by the apprentice.
but.. "The Hidden Life of Trees"
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.
For school, text books on project management and agile management.
For work, technical documentation
For fun, I've been re-re-reading a lot of Terry Pratchett's stuff as well as a lot of excellent Discworld fan fiction from AA Pessimal on fanficton.net - https://www.fanfiction.net/u/1... . If you like Pratchett and all things DIscworld, Pessimal's stuff isn't to be missed.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
In 1966, as a result of a mid-air collision of US aircraft, four unarmed thermonuclear bombs dropped onto Spanish territory. Three were recovered on land. Tracking down the fourth required the largest search-and-salvage operation in U.S. military history.
The Day We Lost the H-Bomb by Barbara Moran is a fascinating read.
https://www.goodreads.com/book...
Although I read this quite a bit ago, "On Killing" by Lt Col Dave Grossman, very interesting read.
It's about the uprising in East India Company controlled India that lead to the direct UK government rule.
I have always found this essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/make...
To be the best way to explain to managers/executives how to work with engineers.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Author Bill Bryson explains some areas of science, using easily accessible language that appeals more so to the general public than many other books dedicated to the subject. I'm just beginning the book, but I've already found it absolutely fascinating as it's filled with little factoids, such as why Pluto lost its planetary status (it's less than half the size of the United States and may even be a comet in the Kuiper belt), or of the billions and billions of species that existed throughout Earth's history, 99.99% of them no longer exist; the average existence of a species is 4 million years.
It's a really compelling read.
Investing in REITS, 4th edition, Ralph Block
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
(Rereading it) The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
Short Next List (I have dozens more on my list):
Early Retirement Extreme: Jacob Fisker
Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution: Steven Levy
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits: Phil Fisher
Interpretation of Financial Statements: Benjamin Graham
By Neil deGrasse Tyson
"A Companion to Hegel"
Hegel himself is very nearly impenetrable, so I'm using this book as something of a mental crutch.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
"Patriots and Liberators", Simon Schama,
"Right Ho, Jeeves", P.G. Wodehouse.
by Neil Peart.
No, I'm not a motocylist, and yes I'm a huge Rush fan. Have wanted to read this for years, so far really good except letter to Brutus can get boring. He really opens himself up. Incredibly sad story... But very interesting as well.
I suppose you never watch (scripted) TV or movies either. Or make up stories for children. You must be really fun person.
"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.
You should turn signatures off.
The Analects of Confucius
Python for Data Analysis
Eon (Greg Bear) - a bit dated, but fun
Dracula (Bram Stoker) - worth it just to understand the source material for so much modern horror
Apollo 8 (Jeffery Kluger) - Great, historical mission that isn't as commonly talked about as Apollo 11 or 13
Anthem (Ayn Rand) - Total garbage, should have known
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths
Most useful amazon review (by Wolfcrow):
There are predictably a number of readers who will look at this title and shy away, thinking that a book with "algorithms" in its title must be just for techies and computer scientists. There will be others who pride themselves on being technologically astute who think they know all about algorithms already. Both groups are wrong. Both will be astounded and profoundly affected by the human applications Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths make in this book for all of us. I should qualify that; it is a book for anyone who has ever had difficulty in such tasks as "when to stop looking" (for an apartment, for instance); how to schedule a busy family's priorities; how to clean out the garage; how to stop thinking about a problem; how to network. In fact, all the day-to-day problems that follow us from waking up to going to bed are addressed here by the human use of algorithms. I confess that I was grateful for the definition of "algorithms" early in the book; it is one of those words that everyone uses but many of us would have been hard put to explain. Notice I wrote "would have been" because this book explains it all so clearly that neophytes can understand it and technological people will not feel they are being patronized. And all of us who really use this book (not just read, but use) will find it has made our lives more productive, better organized, and essentially, much happier. Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths are geniuses at combining cutting edge philosophy with information we can use to make our lives richer.
Not a typical nerd book, but I found myself with a copy of the Phil Collins autobiography "Not dead yet." I was a fan of his, and of Genesis back into the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and I kind of was under the general impression that Phil Collins was dead. Apparently not, and though I wouldn't qualify it as engrossing, I was curious enough about the career of Phil Collins and the arc of Genesis that I found it an interesting and surprisingly well written read.
By Nassim Taleb. Excellent book touching philosophy & psychology in the context of risk management and our understanding (and misunderstanding) of statistics, esp. in the economic sector, but also applied to everyday life. His writing style is funny but for some readers it might be offensive. Definitely for anyone who's not afraid of having their brain re-wired and who likes to take a look at the world from a different viewpoint.
I just can't seem to put it down!
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
The Heart of the Matter
Probably no one today has heard of him.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I plan on starting and finishing the "Where's Waldo" book series. I missed out on it as a kid. And I don't want anyone here to post any spoilers!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
A real masterpiece!
I've been re-reading all the Well World novels again recently. Down to the last two of them. If the theory that our Universe is a simulation is interesting to you, then you'll find the premise behind the Well World to be interesting, too.
Bob Woodward's Fear and The Chapo Guide to Revolution.
Not original at all, but I am reading Iliad by Homer for the 3rd times...
Also just prior to this I read The Golden Ass by Apuleius, absolutely terrific!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Desolation (Book 1 of the Keystone Bone Trilogy) by Jesper Schmidt
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
By Thomas Piketty..I came across this book from a review in NYTimes..Here's a quote from The Times that intrigued me to pick up this book.. "Mr. Piketty argues that the decades after World War II, when the divisions between the classes narrowed and opportunities to move up the economic ladder expanded — that is, when the middle class as we knew it was formed — may actually have been an aberration. Society, Mr. Piketty wrote, risks a return to the historical norm of a yawning gap between rich and poor."
"Foundation and Earth" Of course I have already read it but the Foundation series always is a good re read.
Corporatism != Free Market
I have really enjoyed these books from Olan Thorensen, based on a man from the modern Earth who is sent to another world populated by humans but with 17th century technology:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D3Z3QC3?ref=series_rw_dp_labf
I am reading White Trash: The 400 Year Old History of Class in America. It's really eye opening and challenges everything I ever learned in grade school about American history.
Latest Bruce Schneier book on the dangers of the Internet of Tat
Not much of a plot.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
We're coming up on the centennial of the end of World War One in two months. So a book about the last 100 days of that war seemed appropriate.
And Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, just because I find that part of the Leyte Gulf battles in WW2 endlessly interesting.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm currently reading Wired That Way by Marita Littauer
Understanding personality type.
I just finished Big Potential by Shawn Achor
I'll probably read this one numerous times
And next up is Bringing Out The Best In People by Aubrey C. Daniels
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I've been reading "The Stormlight Archive" fantasy series this summer. Also got my sister hooked.
I also have Aruba (HP) WiFi Self-Study Training and certification that I need to complete by the end of the year for work (they are paying for everything). I plan on completing at least one of the courses and exams this month.
Depends on what you mean by "Reading". I read precious few physical books beyond rather try technical ones for work (Nutrient Requirements of Swine, 11th Revised Edition, 2012 is hardly a page turner).
If you include listening to audiobooks, then I can claim the following:
1. The Light of Life: The Cycle of Galand, Book 4 by Edward W. Robertson
2. The Ritualist: Completionist Chronicles, Book 1 by Dakota Krout
3. The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully by Aaron Carroll, MD
4. Dark Deeds: Keiko, Book 3 by Mike Brooks
5. Grant by Ron Chernow
The first 4 were finished in the last month (had a lot of time to spend listening due to travel), whereas the 5th has been on-again off-again for the better part of the year and I'm only about 1/3rd of the way done.
The Bad Food Bible was the most gratifying. The others are more recreational for me, but since I work in the field of nutrition, it was nice to finally find a book about nutrition that gets far more right than wrong. It has become my new go-to recommendation for anyone asking about nutrition, supplanting The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. Still a good book, but Dr. Carroll's book is more broad yet a quicker read.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Utopia for Realists and How We Can Get There, by Rutger Bregman
A lot of the book is dedicated to the proven benefits of basic income, and how giving money directly to the poor is not only much more effective but also a lot less costly.
Another large chunk is about the 15 hour work week, the benefit of working less and how working more and more, which is has been the trend over the last few decades is bad.
There's a shorter part about the benefits of open borders.
I'm near the end, a discussion about cognitive dissonance, discussing how people find it hard to accept truths, and how even the author may be biased in his selection of proof.
A worthwhile read, IMO.
This is a wonderful book diving into the nature of what it means to _be_ Homo Sapiens; from how we conquered the Neaderthals to industrialism, capitalism and the modern economy. Top notch stuff. very thought provoking.
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
I'm rereading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels after having first read them 10 or 15 years ago. They are every bit as excellent as I remember, and even more of their glory is revealed now through the lens of age. You may have seen the "Master and Commander" movie, but it's a pretty pale ghost of the characters and plots of the novels.
12:50 - press return.
... like:
- Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's cat
- The Quantum Labyrinth
- The Black Hole War
- Tales of the Quantum
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I read it once years ago, but I am rereading it now. I was sort of reminded to it from watching the anime Planetes.
Within the last month i've been reading:
- Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik: A re-telling/twist on the Rumpelstiltskin story. A lot darker and more intense than "Uprooted", but still good.
- All Systems Red - Martha Wells: A story about "Murderbot", a security robot that's broken its conditioning but somehow never gets around to doing much murdering. Re-listening to with my SO because of the Hugos. Still good the second time around.
- The Fated Sky - Mary Robinette Kowal: Sequel to the very excellent "Calculating Stars" about an alternate history space program after a meteor impact in the 50s.
- Girl in the Green Silk Down - Seanan McGuire: Sequel to "Sparrow Hill Road", about a hitch-hiking ghost on the run from a phantom rider. Still in the middle of this one, but enjoying it so far, and i'm curious if it's going to turn into a long running series or not.
"Additionally, what's a book you finished recently that you found insightful, or funny, or both."
I'll pick "funny"
Either
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) - Dennis E. Taylor: A guy gets dragooned into being a space probe. It's got geeky cultural references like Ready Player One (but much more toned down and well integrated with the story) in a near future (relatively speaking) space opera plot.
or
All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault - James Alan Gardner: About an alternate earth where "creatures of the night" are at war with superheroes. The author does humor well, but a lot of it is situational humor about the ridiculousness of the situation and some of it is dark.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Don't agree.
I contributed a post, commented on a couple, and now have some reviews that motivate me to pick something different to read.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I usually start with my check book and it makes me cry, so I don't read on.
https://www.amazon.com/Perfectionists-Precision-Engineers-Created-Modern/dp/0062652559
"The revered New York Times bestselling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement—precision—in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider."
At the moment, I'm reading Kzradock the Onion Man and the Spring-Fresh Methuselah by Louis Levy. Published in 1910, originally in Danish, it's pulpish gothic weirdness, part detective story and part psychoanalytic mysticism. It's good.
I've been on a tear of turn of the century gothic nastiness all month. I just finished reading The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. Published in 1895, it's short stories wrapped around a play within a fucking nightmare. A friend told me that the first season of True Detective made references to these stories and I've since gone back and watched that for the first time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My books for this month:
The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland
Craeft
Zend Frameworks 3
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm considering "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" by Michael Wolff. It's discounted now that the Bob Woodward book is out. Wolff is the "poor man's Woodward".
And I just finished "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist" by Roger Lowenstein. It's a decade old, so also a bargain. (Get the "new afterward" edition.)
What I found fascinating is that the investment business has just as much Dilbertian bullsh8t and wasteful fads as software engineering. We are not alone: the grass ain't greener over there. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but reading about specific examples on the investment side gave it legs. Buffet got rich mostly be ignoring bullsh8t and sticking to long-proven principles and logic.
Although his keen memory is an admitted advantage, he insists that "regular people" can do almost as well as he did with some basic business education, common sense, patience, and a little discipline. Academics mostly ignore him because his process is too simple: you can't sell expensive books and courses on too simple a formula. So they often claim he cheats by using insider knowledge; an unproven allegation.
Table-ized A.I.
The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu (just finished)
The Eye of God - James Rollins
The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
Will be looking for another book by Alastair Reynolds soon.
Haven't decided yet if I want to read the next two books in the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" series by Cixin Liu -- any commentary?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Just finished reading "The Three Body Problem" trilogy. It's translated from Chinese. The first book is interesting both because you can see the different cultural viewpoint coming through, and it's just good sci-fi. The sequels are more epic in scope and darker, and honestly are a bit terrifying. Good reads.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. After seeing all the adaptations over the years, I finally started reading the source material. It holds up well.
Factfulness is a look at world statistics (that sounded very dry, the book isn't). It is not too shocking to me as I am a regular reader of The Economist (if you really want to get to "Oh, my god, he's doing it again" look, just start a statement in a meeting with "As was addressed in a recent article in The Economist. . . ) and I recently finished "The better angels of our nature, a great book but very dry. I mention this to explain why I scored well on the books pretest, yes, the book had a pretest.
The book takes a look at conceptions that people have about the world and compares them to the real numbers. It identifies the misconceptions from surveys, similar to the books pretest, administered to a plethora of groups in several countries. In all, it is a very readable, well researched book.
Finished this month:
Solaris - Lem
Valis (reread) - DIck
A Scanner Darkly - Dick
The Idiot - Dostoyevsky
A lot of insight of the years leading up to the Civil War and 19th century America generally
Currently reading:
The K&R
Engineering Mathematics, 4th edn by O'neil
(not technically a book, but I'm reading it like one) the Wikileaks GIFiles/Stratfor release.
Collected Works of A M Turing - PURE MATHEMATICS
And I'm trying to dig up something at the library that I haven't quite got my hands on yet - a 1984 copy of Electronics magazine. Anyone have a copy / know of where to find one? LC: ISBN: ISSN 0013-5070 Author: Stephen C Johnson Title: Electronics Magazine, Volume 57, Issue 9 Publisher: Informa (previously Penton publishing (previously DateOfPublication: May 3 1984
As far as the most insightful/funny :
I thought Milo Yiannopoulos' Dangerous ranked pretty high of the past few books I've read in both those categories.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I thought at first this said "A Companion to Kegel"
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
the darkening age: the christian destruction of the classical world - catherine nixey...highly recommended for fundies ;). you know, for a scholar she moves things right along
bad blood: secrets and lies in a silicon valley startup - john carreyrou...elizabeth holmes is a very bad girl. but we knew that
amity and prosperity: one family and the fracturing of america - eliza griswold...fracking can be very hazardous to your and your neighbors' health
Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants by John D. Clark, first published by Rutgers University Press, 1972.
It's now available as free PDF and ebooks at archive.org. I thought I'd flip through it for a couple minutes and ended up reading it cover to cover. It's well written, and you don't need to be a chemist or rocket scientist to enjoy it. What I got out of it is how nasty some of the chemicals used in rocket propellants are. And of course there are tales of lonely nerds slaving away in their labs only to die in an explosion. Really a fun read for nerds.
...so you want to monitor our reading choices also here on Slashdot ?!?
The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History Revised Edition by John M. Barry
This pandemic killed in the range of 675,000 individuals in the United States and an estimated 45 million worldwide.
Abaddon's Gate
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia by Craig Unger
Probably should be read with a grain of salt or two.
Again. Yes again. How people understand the broken patois of the south I will never know. Although the patois+spanglish is what I speak. So good.
I have never read a C.J. Cherryh book, series or standalone that was anything but entertaining - and I've been reading her stuff since her first novel was published. They're all good ...
Check out my novel.
I find fiction to be a waste of my time...
Works of fiction are scenarios. If you never 'run' such scenarios to pre-experience what might happen if, being surprised by what reality can throw at you is the REAL waste of time.
Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement.
These are the American equivalents of Lucky Jim.
Wolfe was, overall, my favorite author of all time. Back To Blood, which dissects Miami culture, is his most underrated novel. Read it, and you will understand why. It hit too many nerves.
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker. It's all about how the world is actually not coming to an end, supported by a slew of the sort of hard data you never get from "declinists."
His books are always very exciting and usually have may historical items. Great characters too.
Spending three hours in commute each day I have a lot time to listen to audiobooks so hopefully at least three books this month: "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, "Chapterhouse: Dune" by Frank Herbert, "The Extended Phenotype" by Richard Dawkins. Sadly I cannot cannot find the last one in an audiobook format so I may need to resort to text version and auto-transcription feature in iBooks on my iPhone :(
Louis XI: The Universal Spider, from Paul Murray Kendall. Story of the odd king Louis XI of France (Note almost all notes from the Wikipedia article are references to that book).
I saw that the author, N.K. Jemisin, has won the last three Hugo Awards for Best Novel for each of the books in this series.
On seeing "We have not run book recommendations and book discussion posts for some time." the first thing I wondered is why has slashdot not ever made this as a regular monthly thing? All news sources have their regular cultural posts like this, why shouldn't slashdot?
And please people, don't restrict this type of thing to modern works. If you're re-reading a classic younger folks might appreciate the recommendation. I'd have never read Asimov without such recommendations.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Excellent dystopian novel. Also semi-apocalyptic. The endpoint of extreme capitalism.
<overtly ontopic>
This is a list of holds (beginning with the most recent) covering most of August and September, for myself and my wife.
* Martha Stewart's Pressure Cooker (2018)
* Kurt Vonnegut: complete stories (2017) — over 900 pages
* The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (2012)
* Suicide of the West (2018)
* Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich (2012) — author Chrystia Freeland has a small problem on her hands lately
* Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae (1998)
* How (2007)
* The Lost Art of Reading (2010)
* Leadership: In Turbulent Times (2018) — author of Teams of Rivals
* Fear: Trump in the White House (2018)
* The Shadow President: the truth about Mike Pence (2018)
* The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything (2013) — this could be a ten-minute skim
* The Obesity Code (2015)
* Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (2018)
* Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (2018)
* It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work (2018)
Between us, we generally read about 1/3 of the total amount of text that passes through the house. This is the second pass on Plutocrats, because my wife had only managed about 1/3 on the first borrowing. (Amortized page-consumption quota not including compilations like Vonnegut's, where the target in the first place was to sample a few of his more famous stories.)
I'm also not sure how much attention the Trump/Pence books will receive. They could end up on my frozen list along with four other recent political books to fill some gap in my queue somewhere down the road when I'm less attentive to sourcing enjoyable subject matter.
</overtly ontopic>
Book review screed of the moment HOT HOT HOT
Unfortunately, The Tyranny of Cliches is already in hand, and pages 19–20 are a nightmare to behold.
I understand getting so wound up in your head about a perceived aggravation that you depart planet earth, and make a bit of an ass of yourself in doing so, I've done it myself a few times. But this one made it through the long publishing process. I can't recall the last time I've seen a page in print hold up less well, six years on. I had listened to the author interviewed on EconTalk, and he's an excitable, affable man with a first-class gift of gab and some decent chops in political theory. Just last night I described myself to my wife as someone with liberal inclinations, but largely a conservative implementation toolkit. So where a typical conservative sees government as having a 40-lb tumor, I see government as having a BMI of 25. The true conservative wants to put government on the operating table for radical surgery, whereas I'd be happy just to get government on a rigorous treadmill program—except for the excessive influence of money, which I've always blamed more on the Johns of industry than the Jezebels of congress (greed is not bad, and it's married to a hot wife—capitalism—though you suspect it might divorce its childhood sweetheart in a heartbeat if it wasn't also banging capitalism's trashy sister on the side, any old way it pleased.)
Back to Jonah Goldberg's tirade (that should never have it into print)—he's losing his cookies over one sentence of an early Obama speech:
Grammatically, that's a horror show. I think the implied grammar is "this being an appeal ...". Once you slip this tiny little banana peel into its formal cumberbund, the false resonance is laid bare, de rigeur as it were (who wants a president who can't hide a slippery banana peel in his cumber
From:
To:
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan.
Doesn't everyone have a personal database app to answer such crucial questions? Seriously, I should port it from the current CGI/PERL to something more reasonable and more smartphone friendly. Here is the answer for this month:
http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...
Only five so far, but that's a live link and I may finish another 5 before the end of the month.
For last month, the answer is nine books:
http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...^.{44}1808&searchfields=all&sensecase=nocase&sorttype=none&datetype=comp&numorname=authnums
For the year 2018 (in another live link, though sorted by title using a special book-title ordering function (to ignore leading "A ", "An " or "The ")) the current answer is 98:
http://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi-...
With a suitable regex, I can even answer such peculiar questions as "How many books did I finish on the 15 day of the month?" The current answer is 116 (for the entire database going back to 1971).
Seriously, can anyone point me at a good Python source I could modify to achieve something less kludgy?
Unusual that I posted before searching the existing comments, but I'll do that now... Especially interested in funny books.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Very funny and insightful. Am trying to start âoeInfinite Jestâ but am still deciding if I am up to the challenge!
Both excellent. Brandeis book is as important as ever.
I just finished "Amerika" by Paul Lally, an alternate history WW2 book. It was rather better than I thought it would be.
Next up are the final "trilogy" (it's really four books) of the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen Donaldson.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
I'm reading "Java, The Complete Reference" (Tenth Edition) by Herbert Schildt. I studied Java years ago. This is a good book for me. It reviews what I learned previously, and (later in the book) will teach me what's been added to Java recently.
The Risk Society by Ulrich Beck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A sociological analysis of the concept of 'risk'. Since big data and algorithms are often sold as a risk management tools, this helps to critically dissect those narratives. The book explores how society is structured in ways that distribute risk, with all of us trying to externalise it. For example, a consultant doesn't just bring in knowledge, but he/she also allows whomever hired the consultant to say "the consultant said it would be a good idea, it's not my fault", thus lowering the risk of being accountable/fired..
David Weber's 'Uncompromising Honor' (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1481483501/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) is coming out in October and am looking forward to that. Otherwise (shameless self-promotion) am working on Book 2 in my science fiction series 'Accipiter War' (http://a.co/e9WT4t6) - Patrick Seaman
Surely time to run screaming... Scary story!
Found the person completely clueless about Parables.
Does it matter that the story about the boy who cried wolf never happened? No one gives fuck about the actual history as long as you learn the lesson(s).
Your fallacy is that you think fiction has nothing to teach you; which is false. It is hard to fill the cup when it thinks it is already full. You are completely unable to understand the Three-fold nature of writing:
* Literal
* Allegorical
* Application
By dismissing fiction has having no value you remain blind to the lesson(s) that it can potentially teach. You are stuck at the Literal level not realizing that there is FAR more to understanding then just the Literal interpretation.
Examples:
* You can enjoy The Matrix (1999) at a literal level -- as a dumb, action flick. But you can ALSO understand it at a deeper Allegorical level -- that maybe consciousness is NOT just a physical process but something more.
e.g. How would you know if you were dreaming if you never woke up?
i.e. Peter Russel's The Primacy of Consciousness (Scientists view reality completely ass-backwards: Energy/Matter is NOT the foundation of Reality; Consciousness is. This has yet to be (re)discovered, but I digress.)
* Avatar (2009) Again, one can enjoy the movie as a dumb, action flick. But there are ALSO themes of unbridled greed such as Unobtainium, and respecting the existing plant, animal, and indigenous life. The movies presents the concept that maybe consciousness CAN be transferred.
Fiction OPENS YOUR MIND to possibilities that you normally would not be aware.
But keep writing off fiction as "useless" (pun intended.) Maybe someday you'll understand the point of non-fiction such as Baraka (1992)
I'm looking to finish TE Lawrence's 'Sever Pillars of Wisdom' then I'll finally get around to reading some Austen.
A friend's suggested Lady Susan as a start point, so I'll give that one a go and see how I get on.
- How to win friends and influence people, Dale Carnegie
- Anne Bishop's series 'The courtyards of the Others' (a wonderfully original take on vampires and werewolves, with worldbuilding on par with JK Rowling)
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, JK Rowling
- British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle, Daniel Sharp
Michael Horton's Systematic Theology -- about half-way through.
A history book that has scholarship behind it and written as if a page-turner of a novel.
First four books of Ben Aaronvitch's 'Rivers of London'. I've just finished Banks' 'Consider Phlebas' and it didn't really grab me; the section with Fwi-Song nearly made me throw up and while the rest of it barrelled along at a decent clip, the end felt forced. I might pick up some of the others in the series if they appear in a sale.
On my e-reader ATM are...
Fiction:
The Randall Garrett Omnibus (a freebie), The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (freebie), Ghost Stories by M R James (freebie), a couple of H P Lovecraft compendiums (free; my paperbacks have long disappeared, possibly to Yuggoth), and Slaughterhouse Five. The Way of Wyrd has a permanent place on my virtual bookshelf by virtue of it representing a time and place that were pivotal in my life.
Non-fiction:
A Life in Brain Surgery / Henry Marsh, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers / Paul Kennedy, and The Happy Brain / Dean Burnett. Bruce Dickinson's 'What Does This Button Do?' is worth a read, though it could have done with some more careful editing; Bruce himself can be far more iconoclastic and scattershot than the book implies, so I'm hoping for a sequel that's more true to the man himself.
Currently I am not actually READING any books, I am writing them. I have had one book published by CreateSpace for several years, but have been unable to promote it. Recently I went back to it and discovered a TON of errors, so I pulled it from publication, re-edited it, partially re-wrote it, and have now had it published on Amazon... I would appreciate some feedback on the story... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1720...
Talking to Geeks is like eating jello with a chainsaw, interesting, but painful.
I'm reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. It's a deep read about war and logic of all things. It's nonsensical and means more than most books. I'd recommend it as a read for anyone.
It's been on the best seller lists for something like 2000 of the last 2080 years, so it's hardly going to be controversial. It's even been available in print for over 500 years.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America by Vegas Tenold. Having watched the divide grow wider and wider in politics and economics as well as the rise and "normalization" of white nationalism I'm reading this to try and understand how we got here.
and the loss of our local power and cable:
I'm re-reading the entire Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson. Great stuff; I love alternate histories and navy stuff.
At the moment, I'm rereading One Second After by William Forstchen, which is an excellent read, and I recently learned that there were two sequels to it. Just finished Invasion by Jay Allan, part of a campy military sci fi series that's entertain if a bit lacking in in the sci portion of sci fi. Would recommend The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein and A Life in Letters by John Steinbeck, wrapped up both of those this month and both were exceptional in their own right. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch was a solid read as well.