Slashdot Mirror
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.
* 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 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.
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.
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...
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.
"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
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
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
Bob Woodward's Fear and The Chapo Guide to Revolution.
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 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.
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 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.
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
I thought Ghost Rider was especially interesting for the things it did not say. The basis is that acclaimed Canadian drummer for Rush, Neil Peart had recently lost his only child to a car crash and then his wife to cancer, and went on a very long escapist motorcycle tour of North America and journaled about it. Unexpectedly, he does not wallow in self-pity or introspect much at all (he admits to terrible depression without elaborating or indulging), doesn't share much of anything personal about his lost loved ones (Peart has always been carefully private about his personal life), doesn't say much about the unique situation he had financially that allowed him to travel this way for months (though he does mention some stress about limits and situational and internally sourced pressure to return to work eventually), nor much about his bandmates or the music industry. What it ends up being is not a self-help book for those coping with loss, nor a rock star autobiography, but an interesting travel book with a bonus of subtle gems for Rush fans and possibly Objectivists. My takeaway was that Peart seems to be a man of exceptional integrity to remain true to himself and his visions after all he has been through.