Blog

Just how stupid am I? Let me count the ways…oh wait that requires math. Let’s just agree it’s a lot of ways. But I don’t feel too bad because, not to put too fine a point on it, you’re stupid, too. Read this book and find out just how stupid you are!

A coming of age story set in post-Civil War rural Florida. I found it absorbing and quite moving, though at the end I couldn’t help but think they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had just gotten the kid a dog instead. Parents take note!

My wife Beth’s first novel, it’s a period fantasy piece set in the world of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with Mary Bennet as the protagonist. It’s a fun read I think Austen fans will enjoy.

A classic detective novel, very engrossing. I would never have guessed that Rowling was the author. I just hope she writes more in the series.

Here is how out of touch I am with popular culture: before finding this book in the NYT book reviews, I had never heard of Questlove and was only vaguely aware there was someone named Jimmy Fallon, who apparently has a talk show. Oh well, it’s a big world out there.

I really enjoyed this memoir. Questlove has a deep knowledge of modern music and shares it with us. Serious musicians always see the world through their ears and being able to catch a glimpse of that unique perspective is a treat.

This is an excellent book, highly recommended for anyone in the business of writing software. It contains a huge amount of distilled wisdom. I think its most important message is that coding in the small matters and coding well is all about sweating the details (and writing your tests, of course!).

Diamond surveys traditional societies, focusing especially on those of New Guinea, and contrasts them with modern industrial societies. Topics include diet, social relations, child rearing, multilingualism, attitudes towards danger, and warfare.

So much fun. This book presents a quick and dirty tour through seven different programming languages spanning several different paradigms including Object Oriented, Logical, Functional, and Actor based. You won’t become an expert in any of them, but you’ll get a good taste of what it’s like to use them.

This is probably a bit dated due to advances in the state of the art, but it is still a great introduction to the topic of document storage and search.

Great biography. I knew very little of Grant prior to this book and a lot of what I thought I knew was wrong or distorted. For example, although rumors of his drinking problem persisted throughout much of his life and color his legacy, there is very little actual evidence of it after the early part of his military career, and no evidence that it affected his presidency. Now I will have to read his autobiography.