The Old Man by Thomas Perry. A lazy suspense novel, unimpressed. The action moves along ok but the characters are tissue thin. And when I see a character arrive in…
Author: john
Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. My first Doctorow, and I am not sure I will do any more. A hash of steampunk, cyberpunk, biohacking, post-gender, libertarian themes all jammed into a…
The Genius Plague by David Walton. Award Winner, and has some great concepts, but wasn’t an amazing story. Fun but forgettable. Empty Planet by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. Very…
Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. I hate pop business books but this book does not belong in that category. A timeless approach to the basics of strategy, whether…
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Really great book about decision making, and how to think probabilistically about decisions. Very good. Change Agent by Daniel Suarez. Suarez is always super…
In a recent article about the latest VW Golf, the product manager was quoted “Already now there are ten times more lines of code in the latest Golf than in…
Our Towns by James and Deborah Fallows. An uplifting walk thru towns and cities across America, each of which is finding its way and wrestling successfully with renewal, growth, education,…
The Library Book by Susan Orlean. A peek inside the history, operations, and stories behind the LA Public Library, written by someone who loves books and libraries. Really enjoyable. Rules…
Trains, Buses, People: An Opinionated Atlas of US Transit by Christof Spieler. Oh I love maps, and this book is chock full of them, and a great overview of transit…
Age of Fracture by Daniel Rodgers. I really really wanted to like this book, it is well-regarded and seems to have an interesting thesis about what has happened in the…
Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn. Excellent detective tale set in a future America devastated by ecological change. The protagonist is an investigator who travels town to town, and finds herself caught…
I just reviewed all my books I read over the last year. Here are the ones that stick with me. Fiction: All Systems Red by Martha Wells. The first in…
Every year we play a couple board games over the holiday season. This year’s winner was Dead of Winter. The combination of collaborative play with individual secret objectives is great…
A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias. Ugh, how did this thing get decent reviews? Reads like Asimov from early 70s which I enjoyed when I was 12 but hasn’t…
Ghettoside by Jill Leovy. In depth story about homicides in the poorer parts of LA. The author makes the strong case that the high rate of crime is a consequence…
Aware by Daniel J. Siegel. A recommended text on meditation, but too much handwavey pseudo science for me. Did not find worthwhile at all, rather found it annoying. Buddha’s Brain…
Waking Up White by Debby Irving. A lot to process in this book. I am probably just a few steps along the path to really understanding race in the US…
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Award winner, and an interesting precept about a future human diaspora to the stars, but oh my gosh did it drag on. Editor please.…
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. Great retelling of the cholera epidemic in 1854 London, and the detective workto find the source. We look back andthe infectious mechanism for cholera…