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Does Silicon Valley deserve the credit it gets for digital creativity and social media? Joy …
The history of “time-share” computing networks in several educational institutions in the 60s and seventies. Really explores how these systems created computing “citizens” by empowering users and emphasizing the community aspects of the systems.
A cartoonist sketching his way through a tour of Europe to promote his graphic novel, with a stop over in Morocco. Many portraits and slices of life from his various encounters. I appreciated his honesty about his own struggles while traveling, from feeling ill from his diet change to being neurotic about feeling ill, from being wary of being scammed to playing along with the scam because it might lead to an invitation to a family home that will be an interesting experience and good fodder for his travelogue. Enjoyable read but made me nostalgic for traveling to new places and wandering around them, and a bit sad thinking about how long it will be until I get to do it again.
Young dragons prophesied to save the world learn the hard way that families aren't always what they seem.
Content warning cw: suicide, sex work
Each story in this collection pivots around a transformation of some facet of life as we know it to deliver a series of visions of some possible, and some impossible, futures for America. From elderly family members who are outcast for refusing to take their own life when they cease to be productive, to the ending of prisons through sentences that remove memories, to a "rock star" prostitute who is thronged by legions of adoring fans during her tour of the country, Baker explores the edges of the alternate futures and imagines the inner lives of the people living through it. In so doing, re reflects back on our own contemporary condition an gives space for other ways to think about our future.
The Ark was built to save the lives of the many, but rapidly became a …
I really wanted and expected to love this book, but I only ended up liking it. Set in an alternate London in a timeline (several) where European colonialism never happened and Kemetic (ancient North African) religious beliefs are the default. It follows a boy, Markriss, as he makes his way to the Ark, an enormous self-contained building/biome which a lucky crew are accepted to live. And then there is time travel and astral projection.
Parts of this book are brilliant, solid pacing and narrative cohesion, but the transitions between parts often feels forced. Multiple times I found myself losing interest in the book, only for a section to find its focus and pull me back in.
It was an interesting read, with lots of ideas, but all the ideas just don’t quite hang together so well. Slightly disappointed, but only because my expectations were so high.
A supernatural buddy adventure set in rural Kentucky that goes in some very unexpected directions. It tries to say some things about mis-perceptions of "Southern" culture, but overall the books uneven pacing and sometimes confuding narrative detract from it.
Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange …
On one level, a lyrical and ethereal time travel romance that feels fresh. On another, a metaphysical work about the power of words to transform our selves and our world. Absolute stunner.
Inspired by the "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White--in that the authors address those …
I picked this book up on a whim when it was on a free shelf outside a store in a tiny town in New Mexico. I was intrigued by a book about programming from 1976 with a cover that gave a feeling of downright whimsy; cherubs, intricate ornamental patterns along the border. And even the title: "COBOL with Style" gave it a more modern feel. Most older programming books I have encountered have a much dryer, matter-of-fact presentation, setting out to teach you the facts of the language.
Though I've never written a line of COBOL in my life, and never plan to, I decided to read this anyway and I was pleasantly surprised by how much of it felt applicable. It spends most of the first half encouraging you not to just jump into programming, but spending time upfront assessing and fleshing out the actual problem, planning your approach …
I picked this book up on a whim when it was on a free shelf outside a store in a tiny town in New Mexico. I was intrigued by a book about programming from 1976 with a cover that gave a feeling of downright whimsy; cherubs, intricate ornamental patterns along the border. And even the title: "COBOL with Style" gave it a more modern feel. Most older programming books I have encountered have a much dryer, matter-of-fact presentation, setting out to teach you the facts of the language.
Though I've never written a line of COBOL in my life, and never plan to, I decided to read this anyway and I was pleasantly surprised by how much of it felt applicable. It spends most of the first half encouraging you not to just jump into programming, but spending time upfront assessing and fleshing out the actual problem, planning your approach in pseudo-code, and determining your documentation strategy. Then the advice about writing code is mostly about using meaningful variable names, structuring your code with module to make it easier to read, and other strategies for making it easy for others to understand the code.
Anyway, it was an interesting read, giving me a peak into what it must have been like for COBOL programmers, and just how long some ideas about good programming have been around.
Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is on the most dangerous quest of his life. With the help …
A fun engaging story to share to with my 11yo.
Joe Mondragon, thirty-six with not much to show for it, a feisty hustler with a …
A wildly entertaining and enthralling story of a small New Mexico town (Milagro) and the effects of money, power, history, and perception, on the lives of both its residents, both poor and wealthy. The author spares no paragraphs in telling the sometimes tragic, sometimes ridiculous, history of the towns residents, many of whose families date back to original Spanish settlers.
What I've really been left thinking about is the statement it makes about the outsized importance that the perception of power plays in determining the towns fate. While the richest person in town (referred to via nicknames and translation from Spanish as "Vulture" Devine ) has accumulated most of the land and power in town, seizing on the times of weakness of the poor, what doomed the residents, and their ancestors, to dispossession was their perception that they were powerless. The crux of the novel is about taking power, even …
A wildly entertaining and enthralling story of a small New Mexico town (Milagro) and the effects of money, power, history, and perception, on the lives of both its residents, both poor and wealthy. The author spares no paragraphs in telling the sometimes tragic, sometimes ridiculous, history of the towns residents, many of whose families date back to original Spanish settlers.
What I've really been left thinking about is the statement it makes about the outsized importance that the perception of power plays in determining the towns fate. While the richest person in town (referred to via nicknames and translation from Spanish as "Vulture" Devine ) has accumulated most of the land and power in town, seizing on the times of weakness of the poor, what doomed the residents, and their ancestors, to dispossession was their perception that they were powerless. The crux of the novel is about taking power, even in small, stupid, spiteful ways that aren't "political statements", but just individual's asserting their power to do something forbidden because it makes them feel less hopeless. Though some of the poorer residents try to transform the small act of refusal into a catalyst for collective progress, they struggle with their communities own divisions, personal histories, and fears. Nonetheless, the powerful residents start to believe the poor are organizing and dangerous, and that perception starts to tilt the balance of power.