My Bookshelf

This is the third book in the Murderbot series and the best one I’ve read so far. Good story and a fast, enjoyable read.

Another good short story set in the Murderbot universe. Fast read and enjoyable.

This was a much faster read than I anticipated. It was still a fun little sci fi story I’d recommend.

Had a hard time making sure I didn’t pre-judge this based on The Expanse series but this was definitely a solid sci fi story. Interesting premise and characters that left me wanting to read more.

This felt a little different than what I normally read, but it was suspenseful and fun to read.

I idolized Mr. Rogers as a child and I thought this was a very fitting biography of him. I’ve heard so much about him growing up and this was a nice look into who he was as a person.

An interesting story that in some cases felt like it hit a little too close to 2020, but was still enjoyable with a good amount of suspense to want to know what happens next.

This was an interesting read describing the run up to the Civil War and the fall of Fort Sumter. It provides interesting insights into the characters involved and some of their motivations.

This was an interesting look at how strong our first amendment protections are and why, despite the constant threats of mis and disinformation, is such a good thing. It might be easy to want the government to step in, but Jeff Kosseff does a good job explaining why that’s not such a good thing and offers some better alternatives.

A lot of insight into his thoughts as a writer and some tips to help me figure out what my process should be. It was helpful to read about his thoughts on the craft.

I appreciate Cory Doctorow’s writing about tech and this is no different. He does a good job explaining the issues with the tech giants and how they got so large and powerful, as well as some ways to limit their power and give us more power in the process.

This didn’t necessarily feel like something I normally read, but it was still a captivating story. The characters felt believable and there were points I didn’t want to put it down.

This was an informative read about events I was unaware of. It also provided a look into the Nixon White House that clearly matches the reputation of Nixon and Kissinger.

I loved Wanderers and Wayward is a great sequel to it. The characters and the story is gripping, captivating and enjoyable.

It was an interesting story with good characters and a nice level of suspense. Quick read as well.

Interesting story with a hopeful look towards the future dealing with climate and intolerance.

A fast read and a good story. If you’re a fan of Doctorow’s writing, you’ll like this.

I really enjoyed this one. The characters were interesting and it had a good level of suspense with an interesting story to back it up.

I enjoyed this. Was a little different than I expected, but not in a bad way.

Interesting story but the anti-climate change messaging rubbed me the wrong way, even considering the time it was written.

I enjoyed this. Was a captivating story that made me kept wanting to read more.

An interesting look back at Patrick Stewart’s life.

I enjoyed this. It had a good mix of humor with John Scalzi’s excellent storytelling.

I really enjoyed this. Parts of it felt a little too on the nose after 2020, but the characters and story was captivating.

I really enjoyed this one. It had an interesting premise and the suspense kept me going throughout.

To be blunt, I’m not sure why so many speak so highly of this.

It was a little predictable in some aspects, but I enjoyed it.

This whole book made me chuckle at some of its ridiculousness. Feels a little like Seinfeld meets the madness of war.

This was a good look into test-driven development. Adam did a good job explaining it and showed some examples for those with an idea of what TDD is, and for those with no knowledge of it.

An interesting premise and a fun story. Was a quick read and enjoyable.

Was informative. Learned a bunch, but was tough to wrap my head around some of it. Figure more will make sense as I apply what I learned and write code.

I had already learned most of the history of much of the crypto-nonsense from other sources, but this was a good refresher. It does a good job pointing out the many similarities between crypto, Ponzi schemes and gambling.

It was an interesting read and gives me thoughts on how to improve myself and rethink my outlook on life.

Another fantastic book documenting the battle between Octavian and Antony that led to the end of the Roman Republic. Strauss does a fantastic job of laying out the events as they happened with all the characters involved.

This was an interesting look at the last years of the Roman Republic before it became the Roman Empire. I lot of it I didn’t know and Duncan did a good job navigating the different events and characters involved.

The book was slow at times and seemingly wandered off track. The finish was definitely a good one though.

I really enjoyed this read. Matt had a good sense of humor and it was interesting to realize some of the many ways math affects us without us realizing until it goes wrong.

This was an interesting, if depressing read. It’s sad to see how racist we still are as a nation.

I was given this book by my job to help with my career trajectory. It was an interesting look at how we handle ourselves and gave good advice on how to improve our interactions with others.

This was a fantastic look at the various things we’d have to look at as a society to actually settle space. It’s written in an easy to understand way and really made me think about the near future of space exploration and settlement.

As someone who is trying to explore his creative side more, I appreciated the insights provided.

I didn’t like this as much as the first book in the series, but I’m having a hard time articulating why. It wasn’t bad, just didn’t live up to The Forge of God.

I enjoyed the story. It was interesting and brought a good mix of thriller and science fiction.

I enjoyed some of the stories. Others, not as much

This was an interesting, though kind of dry read about some of the dangers that lurk in the world of online advertising.

It was an interesting read. Arnold talked a bit about his own life and gave some useful tips on how to do better to reach your goals.

This was an interesting read about the creator culture of the internet. It also happened to remind me I will never understand pop culture.

I really enjoyed the story. It had interesting characters and it kept me on the edge of my seat.

There was one quote that stood out to me: "The crypto bubble wasn’t as dumb as you think. It was even dumber.” This book goes into the rise of crypto and NFTs and how obvious it should have been that much of it was kind of scammy at best.

Yeah, this book scared me a bit. Hill did a great job talking about the history of facial recognition, what Clearview AI has done for it, and the risks moving forward.

This was a fun book to read. I enjoyed the story and the characters.

As someone who is starting to write more, I enjoyed his thoughts on his career and advice for other writers.

I saw a lot of myself while reading this. It’s a good book that goes into both the good and the bad of what we’ve built with computers.

I found this book to be incredibly interesting. It was a great look into Lincoln’s political life and how he ran his presidency. The author did a great job of talking about how Lincoln went about making the Emancipation Proclamation as well as getting the 13th amendment passed to end slavery once and for all.

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.