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Booknotes 2.9

Nonfiction

  • How Big Things Get Done, by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner. This was good. Lots of food for thought here; I’ve been thinking about how to apply these concepts to my day job as a software engineer but also to writing novels, particularly the “think slow, act fast” idea. Speaking of the day job, it was fun to see Planet Labs get a mention in the section on modularity.
  • Eve Bites Back, by Anna Beer, about the lives and achievements of eight women writers: Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Bradstreet, Aphra Behn, Mary Wortley Montagu, Jane Austen, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Liked it, especially learning about those I’d never heard of. (Like Jane Austen.) (I jest.)

Fiction

  • In the Woods, by Tana French. First book in the Dublin Murder Squad series. I had this one checked out years ago but never got to it. Picked it up again after seeing a positive review of it recently, and I’m glad I did! Really liked it. Page turner, great writing. I haven’t been reading all that many mysteries these days, but I’m looking forward to reading the rest of French’s oeuvre.
  • Blood Over Bright Haven, by M. L. Wang. So good. Liked it even more than The Sword of Kaigen. It tied together several threads that I like seeing in fantasy novels: history of science (people doing research), dark academia, magic that’s loosely like programming, and activism against sexism and racism.
  • The Gone World, by Tom Sweterlitsch. While the science fiction ideas were quite interesting, the book was a bit too dark for me. Not entirely sure why. Still a compelling page turner, though.

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Booknotes 2.8

Nonfiction

  • Indigenous Continent, by Pekka Hämäläinen, an important and fascinating history of North America that shows how much control Indigenous peoples retained over four hundred years of European colonization. Learned a lot — so much I didn’t know. More people should read this. Also: so much bloodshed. I wish it all hadn’t happened that way.
  • When the Heavens Went on Sale, by Ashlee Vance, about the new space economy. Loved it! Utterly enthralling for this (admittedly occasional) space nerd. The Planet Labs section was particularly fun to read, since I now work there, but I also really enjoyed the rest of the book. Recommended if you like reading about people building things or about space.

Fiction

  • The Will of the Many, by James Islington. Oh my goodness, I loved this. A lot. One of my favorite fantasy reads in a while. Really liked the Roman-inspired setting (similar to some of K. J. Parker’s work), even if some of the faux-Latin declensions were wrong. And the twists at the very end! Very much looking forward to the future books in the series, and also to going back and reading his Licanius trilogy even if it isn’t as good. Also, when I came across scoff (in the context of scoffing down food), I totally thought it was a misspelling of scarf. Then I googled it and, well, I was wrong. Ha.
  • The Black God’s Drums, by P. Djèlí Clark. Novella. Really liked the world and characters. I don’t think the ending worked as well for me — the solution didn’t feel as earned as I wanted it to — but I think I’m being overly picky here.

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Introducing Life of Theseus, from Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans. Available as a free PDF download.

Title page of the book
First page of the book
Second page of the book

Making-of notes

  • It’s set in LfA Aluminia, a resurrected version of Electra. I enjoyed this article about the making of the typeface.
  • Chrome still has the bizarre copy-paste issue in macOS Preview, so I used Firefox. But Firefox doesn’t yet support hyphenate-limit-chars, sadly. I decided not to stress about it.
  • It’s left-justified since browser justification still isn’t great and I didn’t want to spend eons fine-tuning the spacing. I did, however, tweak word-spacing to eliminate hyphens at the ends of pages and most widows and orphans (though I wasn’t fully strict here). Also manually inserted ­ to insert hyphens as needed (mostly in the Greek names — and I probably got some of those wrong but I did try my best) and turned off ligatures that crossed hyphenation breaks (“ff”).
  • I used Paged.js, which generally worked well. Whenever I made changes, though, reloading the page and finding my place again (usually by cmd+f with some string of text) started getting laborious. Thinking about either building a Firefox extension that maintains scroll position even on hard refresh or building an Electron app that does the same.
  • Not sure yet if I’m going to continue on with typesetting the rest of the Lives, but hopefully I do.

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Booknotes 2.7

Nonfiction

  • The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Read it for book club. I found it so-so — there were some interesting bits, but the overall thesis didn’t really convince me. I love popular science when it’s done well, though.
  • No Filter, by Sarah Frier. A fascinating history of Instagram the company. Seemed fairly well balanced. Interesting being in the middle of reading it when Threads was released. (I like that Instagram is better designed than Facebook, but in general I wish I never had to use either again. Much prefer just posting things here. Maybe one of these days I’ll jump off the bandwagon for good.)

Fiction

  • Stargazy Pie, by Victoria Goddard. Liked it, and planning to read the rest of the series (along with the rest of Goddard’s swiftly expanding collection of books). Somewhat darker than I expected after reading The Hands of the Emperor, but still cozyish.
  • Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang. Pretty quick read. It felt sort of like a literary thriller and sort of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. (Meaning the character’s choices, not that the book was poorly written, because it wasn’t.) Also, I love pandan! Planning to get some extract so I can try pandan pancakes…though hopefully not with the same outcome as what happens in the book.

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Booknotes 2.6

Nonfiction

  • Draft No. 4, by John McPhee, on writing nonfiction. I hadn’t read anything of his before this. Mostly enjoyed it. The Kedit section interested me a lot. And this was fun: “The planet, of course, is covered with demonyms, and after scouring the world in conversations on this topic with Mary Norris I began a severely selective, highly subjective A-list, extending Mancunian and Vallisoletano through thirty-five others at this writing, including Wulfrunian (Wolverhampton), Novocastrian (Newcastle), Trifluvian (Trois-Rivières), Leodensian (Leeds), Minneapolitan (Minneapolis), Hartlepudlian (Hartlepool), Liverpudlian (you knew it), Haligonian (Halifax), Varsovian (Warsaw), Providentian (Providence), and Tridentine (Trent).”
  • Convictions, by John Kroger, about life as a federal prosecutor (an AUSA, more specifically). Really liked it, especially the mafia, 9/11, and Enron parts. Parts of it kind of made me wish that I’d gone to law school. Apparently I really like legal nonfiction. (Less so the illegal stuff, har har.)

Fiction

  • All This Will be Yours, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Novella about time travel. It’s fairly silly, but there were some interesting ideas, which I think is largely why I read Tchaikovsky. At some point I need to go back and finish the Children of Time series.
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. A reread, for book group. Loved it just as much if not more this time round. So, so good. Epistolary fiction is my jam.

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Booknotes 2.5

Nonfiction

  • The Invisible Kingdom, by Meghan O’Rourke. An important book about chronic illness. It’s so, so frustrating what these people have to go through — and not only the chronic illness itself but also the poor treatment from doctors who tell them it’s all in their head. (I have a friend with Lyme disease and a lot of this book sounded like it lined up with what I know of her experiences.)
  • Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson. Whew. Another important book that was painful and maddening. So many monstrosities. Ugh. I hadn’t heard about lynching postcards before, or the bridle reins made from the flesh of Native Americans, or how much those early Americans hated Italians, or most of the stories about how people tortured and killed African-American slaves. The comparison between Nazi Germany and American slavery was on point and really hit home for me — especially that the Nazis thought America was too harsh in some cases. Sheesh. The comparison to Dalits was also illustrative. I hate caste systems. Humanity’s capacity for horrific violence is awful. On a mostly happier note, I didn’t know that the idea of inoculation came from West Africa! That was great.
  • Shareware Heroes, by Richard Moss. I read this for the nostalgia, as a kid who grew up playing lots of MS-DOS shareware games in the ’90s. Fun to read more about Kingdom of Kroz, Hugo’s House of Horrors, Commander Keen, Scorched Earth, ZZT, Capture the Flag, Jill of the Jungle, One Must Fall, Descent, Terminal Velocity, and Wacky Wheels, among others. (My 2011 post about DOS games links to some of these.)

Fiction

  • The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. It was interesting, though I think I maybe didn’t like it as much as the other Stephenson novels I’ve read. Still enjoyed the voice, though. A few icky bits. The parts about Turing machines were fun. Also, there are violently murdered Mormon missionaries. (Which was not fun, to be clear. Thankfully the murders happen off-page.)
  • Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Really liked it, especially the religious aspects (which I can’t really talk about since it would be fairly spoilery, so let me just say that some parts resonated, and if you’ve read it then email me and we can talk about it). Also picked up the word slugabed, which was fun. Bujold continues to be one of my favorite authors.

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I meant to post about this a few weeks ago, but BCC Press has published a print edition of In the Image of Our Heavenly Parents. (The ebook is still available as well.)


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Booknotes 2.4

Nonfiction

  • Stealing from the Saracens, by Diana Darke. Fascinating commentary on early Christian architecture’s debt to Islamic architecture. It was somewhat slow going because of all the architectural terms I wasn’t familiar with, but I’m glad I kept with it. Learned a lot. Fun fact: “One striped fabric imitated by the Arabs in Spain was traded under the name tabi, after an Umayyad prince called Attab. It became popular across Europe and survives today in our word ‘tabby’ for a streaked or striped cat.” Also, before this I had never seen photos of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, but I’m glad I now have (mmm).
  • The River of Doubt, by Candice Millard. Great book about Teddy Roosevelt’s journey through the Amazon. Really loved it. It’s a bit intense once they get into the jungle — when I told my wife about the candiru and piranha parts, for example, I accidentally all but ensured that there’s no way we’re ever doing a family trip there — but oh, it’s so good. Very much looking forward to reading all of Millard’s other books.

Fiction

  • Small Miracles, by Olivia Atwater. Recent winner of SPFBO. It was okay, but it didn’t really click with me and I don’t know why. If you like cozy comedy fantasy, though, I’d recommend trying it. (Clearly a lot of other people really liked it.)
  • The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Didn’t really care for it. I’m learning that while I want to like Le Guin’s books, the ones I’ve read haven’t really done it for me. Not sure why. Probably not going to read any more of hers, sadly.

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Booknotes 2.3

Nonfiction

  • All the President’s Men, by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward (1974), about Watergate. I totally ate this up. Journalism histories like this are my favorite. A couple years ago I read and really liked Yours in Truth (about Ben Bradlee), and at some point I’m planning to read Katharine Graham’s Personal History. (And of course I’m interested in more than just the Washington Post.) Always open to recommendations!
  • Size-specific Adjustments to Type Design, by Tim Ahrens & Shoko Mugikura (2014). Some great type specimens in the latter half of the book.

Fiction

  • Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch (2011). Second in the Rivers of London series. Some earthy bits, and it definitely felt more like a police procedural than Alex Verus and the Dresden Files. Liked it enough that I plan to keep reading the series.
  • The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison (2014). “This is a boring book,” I wrote back in 2016 when I bounced off it after one or two chapters. This time round, though, I loved it! A lot! I wish there were dozens and dozens of books in the series. (And yes, I’m looking forward to The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones.) It often reminded me of The Hands of the Emperor in lovely ways. So glad I came back to it.

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Booknotes 2.2

Nonfiction

  • First, by Evan Thomas. Great biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, who I didn’t know much about before this. Learned a lot about SCOTUS. I miss the days of a more balanced Supreme Court. Mildly surprised to read that O’Connor once got a priesthood blessing from Bill Marriott and also read the Book of Mormon.
  • James Patterson, by James Patterson. An “ego-biography,” in his words, which seems about right. I haven’t read any of Patterson’s books and I’m not sure I will (thrillers are too stressful for me, so I avoid them most of the time), but this was an easy, entertaining read. Not as much about writing as I’d been hoping for, though. Still, the little bit about outlining was something I needed to hear, and the perspective on co-writing was interesting.

Fiction

  • Taken, by Benedict Jacka. Third in the Alex Verus series. A fun, popcorn read. I think I liked this one more than the first two. Sort of like Dresden but without the problematic bits. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.
  • Best Served Cold, by Joe Abercrombie. Whew, content warnings galore on this one. Much more graphic than the First Law trilogy, at least in my memory. After filtering out all the grimdark grit, though, it was a compelling vengeance tale, and my brain really liked the prose.

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