A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

• All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley. Great characters, but story felt a little slapdash.
• The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen. Part of the now flood of Scandinavian author mysteries. A good disturbing tale and a character with promise. But something is off in the book, dialog seems particularly colorless and flat — few idioms, simple structure. I doubt Danes as a society are colorless and flat. It is possible the author chose this style for the protagonist who is somewhat repressed. But I am wondering if it might just be a poor translation. Knowing no Danish, there is no way for me to verify.
• You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin. An introverted scientist finally comes to terms with his wife’s passing and his inability to really connect. Very compelling.
• Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks. Another of his books set in his Culture universe, this time concerned with virtual environments and their abuse. I find the Culture series to be always entertaining.
• The Alteration by Kingsley Amis. First of his I’ve read, a boy deals with his fate in an alternative world where the Reformation and Renaissance never really happened. An ugly world in many ways. “Alteration” is at play on many levels here.

A kind of melancholy grouping of books this week, all exploring time and mortality in different ways. I need to switch it up after these.

• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. A half dozen characters and their interplay over their lifetimes. Time wears us all down, changes us, transforms us. The structure seemed a little gimmicky but maybe ok.
• A Step from Death by Larry Woiwode. A brutally honest meander thru the author’s life as he contemplates fatherhood and faces death. The narrative bounces paragraph by paragraph across decades, and in the hands of a lesser writer, it would be chaos. But it is excellent. And tough.
• How It All Began by Penelope Lively. A chance mugging sets off changes through a set of interconnected lives. Along the way the characters mull over the choices in their lives, the randomness of events, and the passage of time.

After last week’s foray into the fanstastical I needed to get a little grounded again in my reading.

• Universal Principles of Design by Lidwell, Holden, Butler. Nice reference on 125 fairly universal patterns to follow in designing products or experiences. Nice reference, not really a book you read, but something you come back to time and again.
• How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog by Chad Orzel. I thought this would be even more approachable than it is. A reasonable walk thru relativity but it isn’t really that simple. There are chatty interludes with the author’s dog thru out the book that tend to lighten the tone, but the material is still what it is.
• Why Capitalism? by Allan Meltzer. An abstract defense of capitalism. Honestly put me to sleep. In flipping thru it looked like maybe it got more concrete later but I was gone by then. I guess if Allan Meltzer tells CMU he wants to publish something, then by damn it gets published, but something a little more engaging would have been nicer.
• The Voyage of the Short Serpent by Bernard du Boucheron. And then some fiction, but definitely heavier fiction. A noble mission sets out to reconnect with lost Greenland colonies, and finds itself ground down to survival basics just as happened to the colonists. Rough tale but very human.

• Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. Not sure how I missed this one 30 years ago, a very nice murder mystery set in a futuristic theme park. Has aged well, the story is solid. 
• The Barsoom Project by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. The followon to Dream Park, not nearly as good. I gave up. Too much wandering around in mythology and the psych aspects of Dream Park. 
• Avogadro Corp by William Hertling. Interesting ideas about the emergence of a worldwide artificial intelligence, but terrible writing, terrible characters, terrible story telling. In the hands of a good writer this would have been quite a tale.
• Backstage Wall Street by Joshua M. Brown. The author pulls the curtains back on some of the sell side antics of financial services firms. If you were confused and thought that financial firms were working on your behalf, this is the book for you.
• The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser. Great book on how the major players on the Internet are collaborating to feed us pablum. Reminds me that I need to challenge myself in my reading and force different thinking into my life.

• Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Excellent how-to on how to effectively promulgate ideas. Reader’s Digest version of the book — tell stories, not bullet points. I don’t like many business books, they all seem to blur together, but this is an excellent book.
• Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed by Dave Feinleib. Solid lessons for startups from a guy who has been in many, and has invested in many. And is a friend and colleague from MSFT and other past endeavours.
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Ok I admit I actually read this book almost 40 years ago, and I bet it hasn’t aged well, but I loved it and I in fact still have the whole paperback series and am hugely looking forward to the movie, tho I fear it could be a bomb.
• Firebird by Jack McDevitt. One of his Alex Benedict novels, think Indiana Jones in space. Fun stuff, solid tale. A Nebula nominee, for good reason.
• Wild Thing by Josh Bazell. Not as good as his first, Beat the Reaper but still a fun ride. 
• Don’t Put Me In, Coach by Mark Titus. I wanted to like this book — a loyal Buckeye — but it is sophomoric, misogynistic, and homophobic. When you claim not to be bigoted but use misogynistic and homophobic language over and over again as “humor”, well, you need to rethink.

• The Book of Ebenezer Le Page by G. B. Edwards. Well this really grew on me. The life tale of a Guernsey resident over most of the 20th century, it was rough sledding at first, but I was in love with Ebenezer by the end. He knows every person and every scandal on the island, many of which touch his life. Great tale.
• Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky. Much more interesting than the Jobs biography, gives some insight into the operations of Apple and speculation about how it might fare with the loss of Jobs. Really useful operational insights for any company.
• If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino. A novel that explores the nature of reading and the nature of books via a very unusual structure. I didn’t really enjoy the fabulist elements, not my taste, but a unique structure.
• Atom Chips, edited by Jakob Reichel and Vladen Vuletic. After the navel-gazing of the Calvino piece, I needed something much more definite. This is a pretty dense graduate-level text on chip-level designs to manipulate individual atoms. I am wading thru it, not a quick read.

A little all over the place so far this month:

• The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander. Good discussion of a classic design methodology, applies to software as well as architecture. Not a scalable scheme at all — the author argues for intensive customization with great involvement from the intended users — but still important for some classes of projects, and most importantly, talks about the need to really inject character and soul into design, which is important for all projects.
• Ventus by Karl Schroeder. Classic coming of age myth, with a little high fantasy, nanotechnology, and space opera thrown in. Quite engaging.
• My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber. I read this years ago, and it ages well, Thurber was a fine writer. He was a contemporary of my grandfather’s at OSU I believe, so I feel a little personally attached to Thurber and his tales.
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. I had watched part of the lecture some time ago, but finally got to the book, a gift from some nice folks at CMU. If you read only one biographical book this year about a tech industry figure dealing with pancreatic cancer, this is the one to read — a great message by a very thoughtful man.

I read all these in paper versions as I am trying to dig thru the pile of paper on the nightstand. This paper stuff seems so antiquated compared to the Kindle.

• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Late in life, a man is confronted with relationships and events from early in his life, and tries to make sense of them, struggling with his faulty interpretation of events. At my age, I find this story resonates with me. Amazon at 4 stars, Goodreads almost 4, it is a fine tale.
• The Affair by Lee Child. Purportedly the back story on the Reacher character — how he came to lead his life of opportunistic vengeance. Good but doesn’t really explain how Reacher’s personality evolved — he is pretty quick to violence in this first book, how did he get that way? Amazon and Goodreads both at 4 stars, just a 3 for me.
• In The Woods by Tana French. A detective, damaged by an unsolved tragedy in his childhood, investigates a murder in his childhood neighborhood, and the unresolved issues of his youth overwhelm him. Nice. Amazon only gives 3 stars, Goodreads 3.6, there are large divergences in the reviews. I tend to be more towards 4 stars.
• The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. YA science fiction about an off-earth colony struggling with a native disease with unusual effects. Interesting premise but the main character is unappealing. Amazon and Goodreads give this about 4 stars, I’m just a 3 star.
• The Gray Man by Mark Greaney. A super assassin. Kind of fun. 4 stars on Amazon, 3.96 on goodreads, that all seems a little over the top, but it is a solid book.
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson. The upcoming movie finally motivated me to read these — I had delayed for a long time, fearing that their Da Vinci Code-like popularity. But the first book was awesome, contrasting two highly moral characters, one pursuing truth, one pursuing justice. The second book was ok but the super-human nemesis was a bit trite. The third was again great but in a different way — the interplay of media, criminals, victims, police, government agencies, and the good and bad players in each of these organizations made for compelling reading. Worth the buzz. 4+ stars for the first and third.
• Rule 34 by Charles Stross. Eh. A near future with commerce, internet, spam, fabrication all run rampant. Interesting trends but characters are dead dull. Giving up at halfway point. Amazon says 4 stars, Goodreads says 3.74, but this is just a 2 star for me.

Happy 50th Birthday to the Phantom Tollbooth. I am sure I read this book a half-dozen times as a kid and is certainly one of the reasons I became such a reader. What a great book, I am tempted to go re-read it now.