My Bookshelf

This book is hard to judge since it’s a collection of short stories. Some I liked, some I didn’t, others I was “meh” on.

Reading reminded me how hard it is to know exactly how hard it can be to interact with strangers. It was an interesting read talking about how these struggles have had dire consequences. The biggest takeaway I took from it kind of echoes the classic “trust, but verify” and that empathy can be helpful.

I actually really enjoyed this. It went into a lot of the smaller details of all the things that go into space travel many don’t think about.

This was an enjoyable and informative look back at how different drinks came to determine so much of our history of a species. I really enjoyed it.

This was a fascinating look from both those on the Lusitania and from the captain of the U-Boat that sunk the Lusitania. It was compelling even though you already knew the ending.

I found his look back at the different world governments’ response to COVID to be interesting. It was in-depth and provided some good details. I did feel like it bounced around a little more than I would’ve expected which made it a little difficult to follow.

This was an interesting read and definitely follows close to the current return to office back and forth we’re seeing. It did a good job going into why that’s not necessarily the full picture or what we should be looking at, but rather, finding a better work-life balance for everyone.

The first part of the book gave some good overview of different dev patterns. The rest of the book gave some great insights into better ways to build and make sites more performant. Dangerous because it made me consider some redesigning of my site.

There are many memorable stories and anecdotes in this. David does a decent job of going through what bullshit jobs are and how we got here.

This was a fun sci-fi story. I felt like there was more that could’ve been explored a bit with the characters but I still enjoyed it.

This entire trilogy was well-written and incredibly interesting. This book was no different. It was interesting to read about the Allies’ final push and how long it took Japan to accept defeat. It was jaw-dropping and sobering how many lives on both sides were lost because of it all.

This book continues right from the last book. It provided a fantastic look into the history or the war in the Pacific.

The Pacific Theater in WWII is something I wasn’t as familiar with compared to Europe. The writing was fantastic talking about the history of the big players involved and the actions taken at the beginning of the war by both the US and Japan. It was a great read to learn more about WWII and not dry reading either.

I have a hard time giving my thoughts on this as it’s so far outside of my normal reading material. I enjoyed the story though and found the characters to be interesting.

I’m not sure whether I liked this better than American Gods, but it was an enjoyable read with some interesting characters.

Ever read a book and struggle to define the synopsis? I can’t fully define the synopsis, but I enjoyed the story.

This was a lot different from his other books. It did provide an interesting look into one of the more famous names in Wall Street in the Saloman Brothers.

It was an interesting read talking about the history of the different areas of North America and how their founding and upbringing influence us even today. It was written over 10 years ago, but still hits the notes of the division we’re dealing with today.

This was a good read, especially after having just finished The Bomb. It was interesting reading about how the different early Army Air Corps officers felt about and used their new weapons of war.

This was an excellent read. It was interesting to see how the presidents from Truman to Trump thought about nuclear weapons and how we’ve managed to avoid using them. The work revealed from many in the Department of Defense and other experts was fascinating.

I’ve heard of Pimco and of Bill Gross. This was an interesting read into his history and a bit of an internal look at trading companies.

The “ultra-capitalist” future felt kind of weird. The story itself started off slow but picked up nicely. The ending was a little confusing and befuddling though.

This was an interesting read on ancient cities. I had never even heard of two of the cities prior to reading this. It was an interesting look into the history of urban living, how it began and developed, and how these cities faded into history.

Most of what I read I was already aware of. Still, Cathy did a good job talking about what the issues with algorithms are, and why they can be problematic

Randall Munroe does it again. He brings his scientific curiosity to the answer some pretty absurd questions. He does it with a good sense of humor and easy to understand language

This was a fantastic read looking at how some of the tech and media giants have used the lack of competition to squeeze musicians, writers, developers and the rest of the creative industry. While this book only focuses on the creative industries, there are a lot of similarities all over. Cory and Rebecca do a good job explaining the problems, how we arrived at them, and what we can potentially do to even the playing field

I've been a fan of Tim's writing. This book is no different. It's an interesting read helping give you some rules of thumb when reading about statistics and data. I know I've been guilty from time to time of some of the things one should avoid when being presented with data.

I’ve always enjoyed Drew Magary’s writing on Defector and heard about his brush with death. This was an interesting memoir talking about his road back. Would recommend.

I know that I'm a little weak on making my websites more performant. This book did a good job talking about how to improve both JavaScript performance and examples of some things you can do to make your sites more user-friendly.

I've generally enjoyed Cory Doctorow's writing style. The story had an interesting premise even going so far as to touch on some of today's economic issues. Without giving too much away, some of the jumps in time were a little rough, but easy enough to follow. I enjoyed it, but it was not my favorite Doctorow novel.

I've been doing a lot more unit tests over the last year or two. This book did a good job going over how to write better tests and ways to improve the code to make tests better and easier to write. A good read for developers. The code examples are in C#, but the principals could be applied to other languages.

The book had a little too much of a “Rah Rah” feel to me which I guess isn’t surprising since it was written by Pfizer’s CEO. When I picked it up at the library I was hoping there’d be a little more meat to it.

Being a space nut, this was a fun read learning about the various different ways the universe might end. Katie Mack did a fantastic job describing it with a good mix of humor and not-too-complicated language.

I appreciate Trevor’s comedy and the way he hosts The Daily Show. It was interesting reading about all he and his family had to deal with growing up in South Africa.

I enjoyed this. It definitely had the same style as The Martian. The story had a good pace and was interesting.

This book wasn’t quite what I expected it to be, though looking back at it, I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting. It was still an interesting take on succeeding as a smaller business in the present day’s economy.

The stock market & computerized trading has become a fascination to me. This book does a great job talking about the rise of high-frequency trading and how it has caused some of the problems we see in the stock market today.

I’m by no means a Patriots fan, but I found this to be an interesting look into the 2 decades long dynasty of Brady-Belichick and the Patriots.

Dave Grohl has always seemed to be an interesting and unique person. This was an interesting memoir talking about his growth from High School punk musician, through Nirvana and eventually Foo Fighters. If you’re a fan of any of his work, I’d highly recommend this.

This was a fantastic read into how we as humans can be persuaded into doing things in ways we don’t always recognize. The authors do a good job going into the good and bad of it.

I enjoyed this book. It had a good story that pulled you in. As a space fan, I definitely enjoyed the tie-ins with the Apollo program. The ending wasn’t my favorite part, but it did tidy up the story arcs. Would still recommend it to anyone.

I did enjoy this as the final book in the series. Given that this is the end of a long series, I still haven’t come to a complete decision on how I feel about how the story was ended.

This was a dense read. While I’m not sure I understood everything, Jonathan Haidt’s explanation for why people act the way they do was thoughtful and interesting.

This book made me angry. It made me angry at how private equity firms have taken advantage of tax loopholes to make money at the cost of the little guys.

I had heard all the stories about WeWork and its collapse. I didn't realize how crazy it actually was. The authors do a great job going into what was happening when and why things happened the way they did. I left amazed at how all the red flags Adam & WeWork had raised were ignored for so long.

This book definitely made me think about how I view things and assumptions I might make.

Reading this book made me realize how screwed we were by the COVID-19 pandemic. While there were plenty of heroes doing their best to help solve the issues, Michael Lewis does a good job showing why the organizations we trusted let us down.

I always knew that the public funding of sports stadiums was a raw deal. This book did a great job explaining how bad it is and how we got there.

As an avid listener of Planet Money and someone who's interested in economics, this was a fantastic read. It went into some interesting history in an easy to understand and light-hearted manner.

Being a fan of baseball, this was a great read going into some of the details of how the game is changing away from 'Moneyball' and delving deep into player development.

I heard about this book on a podcast (Marketplace I believe) and learned a lot about the relationship between McDonalds and Black America that has been filled with ups and downs.

Having been listening to the 99% Invisible podcast for a long while, it was nice to read about more of the hidden designs in cities and towns.

As a Hardcore History fan, Dan Carlin does a great job writing about close calls to having humanity being wiped out or the population dramatically reduced.

Solid detective novel and a good follow-up to Lock In.

Great novel to finish the trilogy. A great ending and worth the read.

Solid continuation of the Interdependency Series by John Scalzi. Definitely made me want to continue reading.

This was a good start to a good science fiction trilogy. I'll have to finish it to be able to say more, but it definitely kept me hooked and wanting to continue.

This was a long read, but thoughtful and complicated. It goes into how services like Google & Facebook take as much of our data as they possibly can even when it will disturb the general population. It also confirmed my reasons for deleting my Facebook and Instagram accounts as well as moving away from Google.

This was a fantastic read talking about people looking into the real-estate market prior to the 2008 financial collapse. Michael Lewis did a great job of keeping the story interesting while also using language and terms that make the story understandable to anyone.

I read this to get myself ready for the HBO series. I enjoyed the story and thought it provided a bit of supernatural mixed with just the right amount of suspense. If you're a Stephen King fan, you'll definitely enjoy this.

I don't think I would of expected something like this to have been done with a graphic novel, but it was anyway, and done well. It was an interesting read about the economics and some of the misunderstandings of immigration.

As a fan of XKCD and of Randall's humor, this book was informative and funny. Randall has a fantastic way of bringing science, humor, and the absurd together in an interesting and easy-to-read-and-understand way.

This book made me go back and forth between "wow, that's interesting!" and anger. I learned a lot about little (but actually big) things different departments within the U.S. Government does and the risks now in place due to the cronyism and general lack of knowledge the Trump Administration has introduced.

Another solid novella set in the universe of The Expanse.

Reading this during Trump's presidency gave me some hope for the country being able to move forward. It reminded me of Martin Luther King's Quote "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It took a look back at previous tumultuous times in America and showed that while progress hasn't always been as fast as I would like, we as a nation have progressed.

I've been getting more interested in how the financial world works. This was a fantastic read about High-Frequency Trading and how it often screws over common investors like you and me. Michael Lewis then goes on to tell how one guy went about figuring this out to then trying to even the playing field.

I've been a big fan of Peter Sagal ever since I started listening to Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! I'm also a fan of running. This is a fantastic read that is inspiring whether you're a runner or not. The book contains Sagal's wit and humor as well as some good life lessons.

I enjoyed this one. Wasn't my favorite Crichton novel, but it was an interesting story with a plotline that had the right number of twists.

Continuing going through my Michael Crichton backlog, I wasn't super impressed with this one. It was a decent science fiction story with a bit of a horror element, but it didn't draw me in like some of his other novels.

I really enjoyed this. The horror element mixed with the idea of nanotechnology provided for an excellent read.

I enjoyed the story, and with me reading it during the lead up to the outbreak of COVID-19, it rang a little scary.

I enjoyed just about all the stories in this collection. Many of them rang true to what we could see come to fruition in the future.

This was a very long read, but gave me a much better understanding of the Vietnam War. It provided me a lot more background as to what went on in Vietnam even before the US got involved. It's a deep read, but if you like history, I'd highly recommend it.