What are you reading this week?
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What are you reading this week?
This used to be semi-regular but I’ve not asked the question in two years (…). What are you reading?
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I’m re-reading a classic of 80s Swedish literature, Gentlemen by Klas Östergren. I seldom read in Swedish because I mostly like SF and there’s not that much Swedish SF. I regularly feel I’m not really connecting with my native tongue other than through work and conversation or via “journeyman” language like daily journalism. Östergren is a good author and the story (a sort of picaresque with Paul Auster-like influences) is entertaining.
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Love that book. Probably his best one.
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Just finished “Designing Data-Intensive Applications”, was very interesting and easy to read. I’m still in the process of deciding the next one.
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I rate Designing Data-Intensive Applications very highly indeed. Might put it on the list for a re-read!
A friend also recommended Seven Databases in Seven Weeks but I’ve not got around to it yet.
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Ooo “Designing Data-Intensive Applications” is so good! I read it last year, and should probably review my notes 😅
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Nice, I am currently reading that book too.
As a suggestion, Seven concurrency model in seven week is also a rather nice read, and would complement nicely what you are reading now.
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Very slowly working through “Types and Programming Languages”. Wish I had read this long ago, so many PL twitter threads and papers would have made so much more sense.
For fun, on (audio)book 13/14 of Wheel of Time. What it lacks in quality it makes up for in volume! The objectifying descriptions of women tamed down some once the new author took over.
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Speaking of which, if anybody knows of / would be interested in forming some sort of book club or reading group around “Types and Programming Languages” or the like, let me know! I think mostly it’s grad students who read this book and as an industry practitioner I’m really missing kind of the social aspect of it.
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Im in!
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Poking at Code 2nd edition.
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Came here to say that I’m excited to re-read this. My list of books is more of a backlog but this will jump to the top.
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I may not actually finish any of these, as is always true for me, but I’m partway through each of:
- Governing the Commons, by Elinor Ostrom: a book about how groups deal successfully with the “tragedy of the commons” problem and related issues.
- Complex PTSD; from Surviving to Thriving, by Pete Walker: I enjoy reading opinionated accounts of psychology, and this one is very opinionated.
- Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon: I tried reading this in high school and got bored; I’ve recently found that many things I thought were boring when I was younger have somehow become fascinating, so I have high hopes.
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If you have trouble reading GR, I do recommend the audiobook. I read it once and fell for it, but listening to it gives you more of the rhythm of the story in spite of the jargon, foreign words, etc. Watching or reading about the V2 project doesn’t hurt either. If you can’t get into it, Bleeding Edge is also good and a frighteningly accurate portrayal of the silicon alley era in nyc. Unfortunately the audiobook of that one is monotone and bad (at least the version out a year or two ago)
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I just read through Programming In Modula-2, as a little bit of a retrocomputing language exploration kick. It’s interesting ’cause Pascal, by the written standard, is very much an educational language full of loosey-goosey parts not really intended for complex or portable systems. On the other hand, M2 is a very pragmatic setup that is obviously designed to make systems software. Pondering whether or not to tackle Oberon next.
I wonder what history would have been like if Turbo Pascal had been Turbo M2 instead? But Modula-2 also has a bunch of safety constraints that aren’t super common in languages even now: null pointer checks, overflow checks, high-level pointers are pretty inflexible by default, etc. The book has a few style admonitions I would not have considered, like replacing
foo[1].x := thing; foo[1].y := thingwithwith foo[1] do x := thing; y := thing endso you don’t have to evaluatefoo[1]twice. Life must have been rough when you couldn’t count on the simplest of compiler optimizations, and Modula-2 is significantly more persnickety than Pascal (or C), so making it go fast is probably quite a bit harder. Too advanced for 1980, too primitive for 2000. -
I’m reading the essays in a critical edition of Hamlet (ISBN-13: 978-0393956634). There’s a centuries-long critical dialogue about the play, and it’s wonderful to read different angles on the same work.
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What do you think of the psychoanalytic interpretations?
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I’ve been learning more about food recently and humans’ interaction with it. The most recent book being Food Politics by Marion Nestle (no, not that Nestle). The central thesis is that diet is a political issue, thus our relationship with food is tainted by the involvement of agribusinesses. It’s pretty US-centric, but since food systems are largely a global affair, it touches on the involvement of companies like Nestle (yes, that Nestle) in things like the predatory marketing tactics of food products (read: infant formula) across the globe.
Makes me feel full of… rage? If anyone else knows any other food books like that, I am looking for recommendations.
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Audiobook - Terry Pratchett’s men at arms.
Its great.
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- The Cross and the Lynching Tree - James Cone
- The Reasoned Schemer (2nd ed.) - Daniel P. Friedman
- House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski (I’m almost done this time. I promise!)
- Guide to Competitive Programming - Antti Laaksonen (slowly working through, found through recommendation here on lobste.rs)
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On the technical side: I’m working through Effective C.
I remain scared of C programming and I’d like to not be: so far I’m finding this a really solid way to learn C fundamentals without spending three chapters on “hello world”.
I’m also reading Le otto montagne, albeit very slowly as I’m learning Italian and I have to work with a dictionary. Despite the slow going I’m enjoying the description of a childhood spent in the rural, mountainous areas of Italy.
When I can’t manage those, I’m re-reading Gideon the Ninth because the third book in the series is out soon. Space Necromancers! Need I say more?
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I have the same feelings about c, please update as you make progress!
And I agree, Gideon the Ninth … is wild! - in a completely nutso originally good way.
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And I agree, Gideon the Ninth … is wild! - in a completely nutso originally good way.
I got it for my birthday back in June. Just finished the second one, looking forward to the third as well!
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I’m currently starting book three of The Expanse. I’m also rewatching the TV series which I have never done.
Ty Franck, co-author of the books, sceenwriter and producer for the show, and Wes Chatham, the actor playing Amos Burton from the show and general movie nerd, started a podcast where they comment on each of the episodes: Ty and That Guy. They also talk about movies, tv-series, tropes, general production and actor stuff.
It’s a bit interesting as you get to hear and learn all the sides of the adaptaion process from the screenwriting to the acting parts of it all. While getting some insight into the show and the books which you normally wouldn’t catch.
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I’ll be reading through Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals (submitted to lobsters yesterday), a late 1960s overview describing over a hundred languages. Spent the previous week digitizing it so I’ve skimmed the whole thing, likely to focus on the String and List Processing chapter.
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In the evenings, working through Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. It’s very interesting but poorly edited. I’m currently stuck wading through a section on the Baltics. I’m only slightly familiar with Estonia so keeping Latvia and Lithuania straight is tough. And the author doesn’t reintroduce a name he ever introduced even 10s of pages before. Hard to follow. But interesting. :)
On my phone, slogging through The Leopard, a 50s novel about the 1800s unification of Italy. I thought it was boring at first but has been getting better.
And on audiobook I’m reading Traitor to His Class. I just finished a book on Eleanor Roosevelt and this is my first one about FDR. It’s quite interesting just because of FDR. But I strongly dislike the style. The author makes tons of assumptions rather than using direct quotes (and letting the reader come to conclusions). You often see this from journalists who write about history but this guy is a historian! Oh well.
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I just started reading The DynamoDB Book - I’m only a few chapters in so it’s a lot of review at this point, but I’m really looking forward to sinking my teeth into some of the data modeling tips and tricks later on in the book!
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Literally anything that isn’t “improving” “educational” or “inspirational”; biographies can all get in the ocean; non-fiction entire can join it.
#amreading Book 2 of the Farian War series by K.B. Wagers, “Down Among the Dead”, having just finished Book 7 of the Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky, “Heirs of the Blade”.
Its the weekend. This time is mine, noone elses.
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I was seeing if those things are things I want to read and I laughed out loud reading this review so thank you for that.
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I’m reading the Google SRE book.
I’m also in the middle of
- Human Action
- Thinking Fast and Slow
- The Hidden Agent (by Joseph Cox, the only fiction entry on this short list)
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https://refractions2.com/ - I’m trying to be more deliberate about practicing photography(away from my laptop, not in Lightroom!). The photography examples in this book are amazing, and Ralph Gibson has been studying photography for a long time(he at one point was Dorothea Lange’s assistant).
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I’ve been blowing through “The Chronicles of St. Mary’s” by Jodi Taylor. Just finished book 11 of 13 (to date). Fun, funny, British historical and time traveling drama.
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Data Refinement: Model-Oriented Proof Methods and their Comparison.
It’s about how to prove that one program “implements” another, which roughly means that you could use one in place of the other and be satisfied.
I’ve become very interested in model-based testing, which deals with a similar problem, so I wanted to brush up on the underlying theory.
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Finishing up Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, planning to follow up with The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee which is a sort of spiritual sequel, or perhaps rebuttal of the first, dealing with Native American history since 1890… also poking into some tech books, got through the beginning of Clean Architecture, until the dependency inversion stuff left me laughing a bit too hard to continue.
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Someones scifi manuscript I promised to give feedback on.
Recommend
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