I published Beyond Spreadsheets with R with Manning Publications partly because they approached me, but a lot because they seem to do a good job of publishing technical books and making them DRM free - if you buy a physical copy you get access to the eBooks to download (pdf, epub, …) and use …
Finished reading: Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber 📚 I’ll preface this with my sympathy for my colleagues and friends currently struggling to find work after corporate layoffs. This book makes their plight even worse as it details people who do have jobs, but don’t believe they should as …
Finished reading: Soonish by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith 📚 Another ‘prominently featured on a library shelf’ find that caught my attention partly because of the authors' name - I’ve spent many hours reading Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and there was definitely a time during my …
Finished reading: Version Zero by David Yoon 📚 I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Credit to my local librarians who placed it prominently on a shelf I was casually browsing. The author does a great job of slowly building up the characters and turning up the dial in the last third of the story to the …
Finished reading: Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow 📚 I found this one browsing the shelves at the library and recognised the name from my days reading boingboing.net (and the numerous mentions in XKCD, e.g. this one). I didn’t hate this book, but the writing style did remind me a lot of …
Finished reading: 500 Chess Questions Answered by Andrew Soltis 📚 Not a novel and not a textbook, but it took long enough to read that it deserves mention. This is full of valuable tips and notes, but aside from reading it cover to cover, it doesn’t serve much use as a reference. There were a …
Finished reading: The Apocalypse Seven by Gene Doucette 📚 As soon as I finished The Spaceship Next Door I had a look for the author’s other books. I got mixed up between a couple and I thought this one was the sequel. It’s not, but I borrowed a copy anyway. This is a different story, but …
Finished reading: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim 📚 I was on the fence about this one; I’ve managed a tech team before but I’m not currently in charge of anyone so I’ve about had my fill of ‘mangement’ information books. With that said, this is a novel that tells a …
Finished reading: Jellyfish Age Backwards by Nicklas Brendborg 📚 Another recommendation from social media, if I recall. This had a lot of really interesting information about aging across species, some things we’ve discovered that influence it, and some things that don’t. The focus …
Finished reading: The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette 📚 I like to mix in some fiction between more serious topics, and someone recommended this. I couldn’t find a physical copy anywhere so I tried out my library’s ebook offering (Libby). I’d have preferred to use my new Kindle …
Finished reading: 10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold The Key To Health And Happiness by Alanna Collen 📚 I had this one on my shelf for a while and I’m very happy I finally got around to reading it. I knew (roughly) that we have a vast microbiome within our gut, but I hadn’t really …
Finished reading: Once Upon an Algorithm by Martin Erwig 📚 I liked the premise of this book - algorithms taught with examples from classic children’s tales. I didn’t finish it, however - it was just too wordy (I got about halfway through). In fairness, I started with a very similar …
Finished reading: The Book of Why by Judea Pearl 📚 This was the topic of a book club at work but I’m really glad I read it. My scepticism going in was probably typical of someone not all that familiar with causal analysis, believing that we can just throw all the variables at a regression …
Finished reading: The Self-Taught Computer Scientist by Cory Althoff 📚 This is the book I wish I’d read before doing Advent of Code - a full blog post on that will eventually be on my main blog; I finished both parts of all 25 exercises in (strictly) base R, and am more than halfway through …
Finished reading: Living in Data by Jer Thorp 📚 (previously) As a data person, this book spoke to me deeply. As someone who has worked with collected data many times, it offered a fresh insight into understanding nuances of data, where it has come from, how it is never collected without human …
Finished reading: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande 📚 I honestly didn’t know what I was getting when I placed a library hold on this book - a recommendation from somewhere, but I assumed it was about something like how to write good checklists or manage priorities. This is not that book. …
Finished reading: Our Data, Ourselves by Jacqueline D. Lipton 📚 I abandoned this book after a few chapters. I wasn’t sure how much I really wanted to read a book about technology and data where the author claims on page 10 that “RFID can be monitored at a distance. You do not need a …
Finished reading: Loonshots by Safi Bahcall 📚 This was recommended by someone at work and this time I’m very glad they did. The author carefully details the history of some of the most significant breakthroughs and, as a physicist, isn’t shy with the specifics. It was staggering to me at …
Finished reading: Neuromancer by William Gibson 📚 I was recommended this on one of the socials and figured it was about time to get around to it. As the ‘first’ “cyber” sci-fi book it was well-written and despite being conservative in its predictions for the future, many of …
Finished reading: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek I posted about this one after a few chapters because it started to get on my nerves. I think I hate-finished it. The author makes some more questionable connections (a bow needs to pulled away from the …
Finished reading: Sea of Tranquility: A novel by Emily St. John Mandel I don’t know if it was timely or unfortunate that I read this book so close to The End of Eternity - both had very similar themes, but Asimov is just so good at weaving the threads together into an engrossing story. I think …
Finished reading: 12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson My library had several copies of this on the shelf, so I assumed it was popular or new. The latter is certainly true (2021). This is a collection of short essays detailing the journey from the first analytical …
Finished reading: The New Childhood: Raising Kids to Thrive in a Connected World by Jordan Shapiro Another break from biology, certainly more towards psychology. This one I found randomly (promoted) at the library and given that it’s my kids' school holidays at the moment and they’re …
Finished reading: The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov Easily one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, and it’s easy to see why. I’ve loved many of them, but I haven’t read anywhere near all of Asimov’s works. I saw this one on a shelf and figured it would be a …
Currently reading: Start With Why by Simon Sinek I was recommended this book by someone whose opinion I hold in high regard, but so far I’m not enjoying this book. Not necessarily for the material - I think I can appreciate the points being made about having a defined ‘why’ behind …