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 …
Finished reading: The Cell by Joshua Z. Rappoport 📚 I enjoyed this book - it started with a good overview of the cellular biology but did move on to more organ-based systems, which was perfect for me. The explanations of the lab and microscopy techniques, advancements, innovations, and discoveries …
Currently reading: The Cell: Discovering the Microscopic World that Determines our Health, our Consciousness, and our Future by Joshua Z. Rappoport Continuing with the technical theme, so far this is a deep dive into the very specific mechanisms of molecular biology without (yet) too much emphasis …
Life Unfolding: How the Human Body Creates Itself by Jamie A. Davies How a single cell develops into a full human, and a lot of the molecular biology along the way. I thoroughly enjoyed this read - every chapter had highly interesting points about the particular pathways involved and how the cells …
(backlog from March 2022) Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within by Michael Yarus This was a nice tour of how the complex mechanisms of DNA replication came to be, and how the process works to produce proteins and phenotypes. This was the first time I really felt I understood the difference …