• 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 in business or any other setting.
• The Helicopter Heist by Jonas Bonnier. Gripping, the last half of the book was a rollercoaster. Looking forward to rumored Netflix treatment.
• The Plotters by Un-su Kim. Thriller, a little surreal, even a bit of a parable. Interesting tho not something I would want to diet steadily on.
• Snap by Belinda Bauer. The cover claims this book is long listed for the Man Booker Prize, and that is normally the kiss of death for me, I find the winners to be unreadable. But this is a great thriller and a lot of fun.

• 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 fun, this is a great tale of genetic editing and the criminal behaviours it may lead to.
• The Mueller Report.  A bit of a slog but something everyone should read.
  • I came away angrier at FB/TWIT for failing to aggressively address their roles in election interference
  • I am angry at the Trump administration and all parts of the government for failing to aggressively defend our political system.  The identified Russian actions to manipulate our elections are certainly just the tip of the iceberg.
  • And there seems little doubt about obstruction, and obstructive actions continue today.
• A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White.  Fun space romp.

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 a smartphone”. This statement is interesting in some many directions.

Software content in a car is growing exponentially as connectivity, autonomy, sensors, new compute platforms, electrification all drive into the car and this VW metric is an interesting indicator.

But is that too much software? It seems like my cellphone is jammed full of software, does my car really need 10X the lines of code?

But then the car has at least two major compute domains (UX and drive control) with many smaller compute loads, and maybe it is reasonable to have a lot more software than a smartphone?

Is KLOCs the right way to measure software? That is an ’80s way of thinking about software content and leads to some very bad behavior. Should anyone be proud of this?

What is the quality level of that software? Modern smartphones and the services that power them have the most highly compensated people in the industry banging away on them. How should we feel about a software system with 10x the number of components but with less highly compensated engineers? What is the total lifetime cost of all that software? What is the security exposure of all the software?

The biggest challenge VW is struggling with is OTA updates per the article. The OTA challenge in a car is broad – firmware, headunits, apps all have their own lifecycles and OTA needs. Is there an understanding that a great architecture for OTA and application isolation in the car are probably the first things that should have been put in place?

How much software should be on your mobile phone and in the cloud to support your driving? More or less than is in the car itself? How does that change when your car is always connected?

It is fascinating time in the auto industry. Software content is growing by leaps and bounds. While the VW number may be too high today, there is going to be a LOT more software content in cars over time.

• 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, immigration. There is a lot of great stuff happening everywhere — we shouldn’t let the national miasma blind us. One observation they make — almost every town on an upward track has a micro brewery.
• Those Who Knew by Idra Novey. Not my usual style but a satisfying tale of a corrupt politician whose life ultimately unravels, and lifting of that weight off the people around him.
• Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft. First in a series about a world dominated by a steampunk-ish Tower of Babel. Part allegory, part swashbuckler. A great deal of fun.

• 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 of Civility by Amor Towles. Surprisingly fantastic tale of a young woman in Manhattan finding her way in the world pre WWII. Started slow but oh my gosh did it pick up. Inspiring in many ways.
• The Doubtful Guest by Edward Gorey. Just because I needed some weird.

• 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 in the US. It is easy to focus just on your community and not see the big picture, this really helps to provide context. If you just read Seattle papers, you’d think Seattle is screwing up transit constantly, but this book suggests Seattle is doing a decent job at building out an effective system.
• Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality by Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton. This book intrigues and aggravates me. Which means it is worth reading and thinking about. A pretty damning takedown of the mainstream college education experience. It doesn’t line up with my own experience – but I saw signs of this dark side, and maybe I just lived in ignorance due to my focus and my advantages heading into college.
• 1491 by Charles Mann. Great exploration of the civilizations in America before the arrival of the Europeans. I don’t think I realized just how dramatic the die off due to European diseases was, nor how as a result, the world lost cultures and civilizations that rivaled those of Asia. Sobering, sad.

These seem interesting – from five books

• 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 last 50 years in our country. But overly wordy and repetitive, I just couldn’t stay with.
• Exit, Voice and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman. What a difference from the work above. Tight, focused arguments with detailed supporting notes, with clear economic thinking. Really enjoyed this, a lot of insight into company behavior and political party behavior. Very nice.
• Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport. Starts out super strong, a laborer on a generation ship stumbles into layers and waves of conspiracy. But flags in the last third.

• 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 up in a mystery that drags up issues from her own past.
• The Order of the Day by Eric Vuillard. Short history of the events leading up to the German invasion of Austria. Literary, lyrical, almost whimsical in its writing, tho undercut by the great tragedy that was unfolding. And of course the book offers pointed lessons for our own time. Easy to see why this book has won so many honors.
• Here, There, and Everywhere by Geoff Emerick. A personal and much more human look at the Beatles career by one of the few people who were in the room with them a lot. The book is not without bias, but still super interesting.
• IQ by Joe Ide. Fantastic first novel featuring Isaiah Quintabe, a high school dropout working cases in LA for friends and associates. Great character, great setting.
• The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag. Exceptional story/art/graphic novel about a strange future/alternative America, where we have let technology run amok. The art is so integral to the story, I can’t imagine the Kindle version is worth buying.

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 a super fun science fiction series
• Still life by Louise Penny. The first in her series featuring Inspector Gamache, every entry I’ve read in the series is great.
• Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher. Hilarious series of letters from a disgruntled professor

On the nonfiction side:

• The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan. Won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but if you’ve spent time on the lakes, worth a read
• The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey. Probably will upset some readers.
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. Wow, so much bad behavior by so many people.
• Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever by Rick Wilson. Lots of competition for books shining a light on our current “President”, this was my favorite.
• Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser. Wow we have had so many near misses. And this is nuclear weapons – how much slop and error is there in other governmental and corporate processes (say, drug testing) where the stakes are much lower?

Welcome any comments or reading ideas from others!

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 – encourages a lot of dialog but you never quite know if you are hearing the truth. And the surprise changes to objectives or surprise events that happen every turn keeps everyone hoping. Not a short game to play but a lot of fun. We played with 5 people and it was perfect.

• 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 aged well.
• The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian.  Sad story about human trafficking and its victims, wrapped up inside a suspense novel.  A little uncomfortable at times, human trafficking is an ugly business.
• Bring Me Back by B. A. Paris.  Marketed as a great beach read, at first I thought this was an engaging tale, and then I realized that the two protagonists are possibly the two stupidest people I have ever encountered in a novel.  Abandoned.
• Army of None by Paul Scharre,  An examination of the issues around autonomous weapons.  Mixed feelings.  Some of the writing is very clumsy, but the discussion of the human/weapons systems integration issues are interesting.
• How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley.  A catalog of the mechanics of fascism (and an examination of how they are being used today).  Depressing.

• 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 of poverty and lack of strong government, not surprising.   At times a very sad story.
• Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy by Martha Wells.  Last two books of the Murderbot series, I just love this character.   An inhuman killing machine with a heart of gold and more humanity than most humans.
• The Gone World by Tom Sweterlisch.  Very inventive, humans travel to the stars and the near future and back – and something horrible comes back with them.
• The Darkest Secret by Alex Marwood.  A missing child case turns much darker as her sibling uncovers ugly secrets years later.  Fun.

• 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 by Rick Hanson.  Another text on meditation, way better with much more underpinning and solid practical guidance.  And there is an app!
• Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner.  Excellent start to a detective series, central character is mid-career detective in London with a complex and messy personal life, embroiled in a high profile missing persons case.  Very good.
• Our Little Secret by Roz Nay.  Ooh a dark little tale about obsession, betrayal.  Nicely structured.

• 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 and my own role in the issues.  This is definitely worth reading and thinking about.
• Beyond the Pale by Clare O’Donahue.  Pleasant little detective jaunt set mostly in Ireland.  An appealing couple of main characters.  The MacGuffin is a little forced, but the chase for it has some fun parts.
• Light Years by James Salter.  A bit of a throwback, and oh so nicely written – very very smooth.  Makes the above modern texts seem clunky.
• How It Happened by Michael Koryta.  Solid thriller set in coastal Maine – murders, drugs, tawdry secrets.  Engaging
• Artificial Condition by Martha Wells.  Gosh this MurderBot series is fun.  I want a wisecracking sidekick murderous robot.