Review: Harpo Speaks!
Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a treat. I don’t know much about the Marx Brothers, but this autobiography of Harpo is a delight even if you aren’t a fan.
Blog
Review: The Adventures Of Augie March
The Adventures Of Augie March by Saul Bellow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Great novel, beautiful writing. I see why it’s a classic.
Review: Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A powerful and clear-eyed assessment of the status of blacks in the United States.
Review: The Black Echo
On criticizing things but not people
Aurynn Shaw has a very nice piece about the problem of contempt culture in software developer communities and I recommend reading it if you haven’t already.
In a contempt culture everything else sucks. The programming languages, frameworks, and software tools other than the ones you and your worker hive have chosen are nothing more than great big festering piles of dung. And the misguided souls who have made the embarrassing mistake of using those disgraced technologies are fools and morons for having done so. You and yours, by contrast, offer a little circle of knowing enlightenment, a smugly shining beacon of hope and technological progress in an otherwise dark world.
Read more: On criticizing things but not people → · 1 comment
Review: The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815
The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 by Timothy C.W. Blanning
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A sweeping look at European history from 1648 to 1815. Looking forward to the next one in the series.
Review: You Don't Know Js: Types & Grammar
You Don’t Know Js: Types & Grammar by Kyle Simpson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another solid work in this series.
Review: The Forever War
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Some pretty darn good sci-fi. Haldeman illuminates the cultural and social dislocation experienced by soldiers returning home using the time dilation effects of high velocity space travel. There is also a middle section set in the distant future of 2007 (this novel was published in 1974). It’s a bit weaker than the rest of the book, but at least provides the unintentional comedy that seems to be the fate of most science fiction once the present has passed it by.
Review: The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin by Corey Robin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
An insightful look at the wellsprings of conservative thought.
Review: There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction
There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction by Saul Bellow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Some really good essays, but also a lot of repetition and hand-wringing over modernity. Sometimes you just want to shout “Deal with it!”.