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I'm in for 80 books again, Booklord Challenge again. I finished the last one at about 5 minutes to midnight on NYE because I neglected musicians, so hopefully I'll be better this year.
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Jan 5, 2017 16:19
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I've had a couple full months for reading. I need to get some of them posted here before I finish writing the rest up, otherwise I'm in for a Sisyphean task. 1. How to Fix Copyright, by William Patry Patry is a very accomplished copyright lawyer and legal theorist, and this book is his effort at explaining himself to a non-legal, non-academic audience. His basic points are that most of the self-justifying myths of copyright industries such as film studios and music labels offer are baseless, and that copyright itself is a solution grounded in the reality of a much less modern time. The facts of the economy and modern markets are putting huge strains on the current big players, and rather than adapt their business models these players attempt to use the law to distort the market back to their advantage. He argues convincingly that we need to make laws for the benefit of society as a whole; if the interests of current stakeholders don’t align with that, tough poo poo. He has some great ideas but this book could have used an editor who rode his rear end about structure. Some fine tuning could have made this into a great book but it’s just really good. 2. The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber Gerber has some advice for the aspiring business owner: if you’re in this just to do what you already know how to do but as your own boss you will end up miserable. Your goal should be to create something that doesn’t end up needing you in order to operate; from day one, even if you are the business’s only employee, you should have roles and responsibilities that are clearly defined. Treat even the first step as if you would eventually franchise that exact model. It’s some good advice. The conceit of this book, as an extended conversation/sales pitch with a frustrated baker, may be very off-putting. But if you’re going into business you’re going to have to deal with tools who talk like this all the time so you might as well get used to it. 3. Growth Hacker Marketing, by Ryan Holiday So, growth hacking is what happens when you try to ‘disrupt’ traditional marketing with modern, tech-focused strategies. But you won’t learn much about it here. This book is pretty much the paperback equivalent of a movie teaser. It’s short, but interesting. You won’t come away from this with much other than a desire to know more. 4. Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, by Nick Turse Turse covers the South Sudanese civil war and massacres here in some rather bleak conversations. The subjects of his book are ordinary citizens, NGO workers, child soldiers. In case you had any glamorous ideas about modern war this will dispel them. If you want a something to ground you while you read more abstract pieces about modern South Sudan, this would be a great choice. 5. Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, by Christopher Johnson Johnson does a deep dive in how to make individual words and sentences sound great. He goes into rhythm, connotation, humor, metaphor and other detailed topics, using examples like tweets and brand names, both good and awful. This was a good choice; I’ve been trying to use his advice on my social media posting and have seen an actual marked improvement in how people respond. 6. The Fact Checker’s Bible, by Sarah Smith While this book is clearly aimed at the professional fact checker (a rare breed indeed), its lessons can serve as a guideline for anyone who must take on this role whether they be editors, writers or even social media posters. The basic premise is that every statement of fact must be vetted. This includes mundanities such as the spelling of names or the number of counties in NYC, and more obscure things such as whether a quotation really comes from the purported speaker. The book outlines a system you can use to track each fact that must be checked, and gives helpful tips on how to make the checking process easier at each stage. For example, asking an author to keep their source material well-organized and available helps a whole lot. 7. Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut Vonnegut says here that this book is the only novel of his he knows the moral of: You are what you pretend to be. In this case, the main character pretends to be, is, a Nazi (sound familiar?). He creates propaganda for them. However much he hides useful secret info in his broadcasts he still propagandizes the Nazi effort to the world. Basically the main character is a schmuck, and can’t honestly take responsibility for his actions negative or positive. It’s funny and a good read. Reasonably recommended. 8. The Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder I have a much longer reflection on this play written up, but I won't inflict it on you. Long story short, this is the "something you love" for me more than any other work. Written in the heyday of fascism, it deals with surviving the end of times, and the relation of art and knowledge to mere survival. 9. Super Mario Bros 2, by Jon Irwin SMB 2, as it was released in the US, is the black sheep of the Mario world. It’s a modified version of a Japanese game which originally had nothing to do with Mario. Nintendo gave it to the US because they had the idea we’d like it more than the SMB 2 which the Japanese got. This is a competent entry in the Boss Fight Books series; Irwin does a good job of exploring what made this game special and how its status as a Weird Game has changed over time. 10. Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics, by Richard Evershed and Nicola Temple Did you know that you can, using pure chemicals and an industrial setup, create an amazingly convincing fake chicken egg? Someone who isn’t watching out for fakes, who doesn’t notice the lack of an inner lining on the shell, wouldn’t be able to tell at any stage of the process that this thing came not from a hen’s cloaca but from some lab somewhere. Next to this, poo poo like horse meat in the lasagna and ‘Halal’ being stamped on improperly slaughtered animals is nothing. But everything gets scrutiny in this book. The authors cover every food group, exploring the state of the art in food fraud and food fraud detection. You’ll learn about how different carbon isotopes can signal the difference between corn sugar and cane sugar. The plants use slightly different photosynthetic pathways, which changes the isotope ratios you’d expect. You’ll also see fake grains of rice, fake spices and more. Fortunately the authors have some advice to avoid fraud: buy whole, buy fresh, and know your poo poo beforehand. Some good advice in general, I think. 11. The No rear end in a top hat Rule, by Robert Sutton Maybe it’s not surprising but I’ve had people who are assholes on my mind a lot recently. This book basically says, hey you know that guy who’s a complete rear end in a top hat, and everyone thinks they’d be better off without? They’re right! Sutton explores the effects of assholes on a workplace and especially on workplace evaluation. Long story short, assholes expend effort transferring the credit for others’ accomplishments to themselves. They thus spend less effort doing actually productive things than other people, frequently make themselves look more productive than those people anyway, and frequently generate huge costs just for dealing with their lovely behavior. It’s a classic problem, really. Cooperators letting internal competition produce a poor ‘leader’ is as old as leaders. But people still need a kick in the rear end to realize it. The worst part of this book comes when Sutton allows himself to entertain the idea that One rear end in a top hat can be better than No Assholes. But gently caress that, No Asssholes. 12. You Have the Right to Remain Innocent, by James Duane The guy who wrote this is best known as the “Don’t talk to the police” guy. He makes the convincing case that even someone who thinks they are innocent of any crime should refrain from sharing a conversation with a police officer. You don’t know what they think they know, what they’re investigating, or whether they’re lying to you (which is completely legal). It’s best, he says, to just not have a back-and-forth discussion. But as he shows, your right to not talk to the police is under attack. Conservative judges and justices currently try and often succeed at ruling that simply staying silent, or even explicitly invoking the 5th Amendment, can implicate you in regards to the questions police ask. Instead, Duane urges that you explicitly invoke the 6th Amendment, and never stop invoking it. That is, ask for a lawyer. Don’t say “I think I need a lawyer!” or “Should I get a lawyer?” or “No I didn’t, but lemme talk to a lawyer before I say anything more.” Just say something like “I want a lawyer. Let me talk to my lawyer” incessantly, answering with nothing else. That’s the gist of this 160 page book, but it’s a good book, I promise. 13. Mary Page Marlowe, by Tracy Letts I had wanted to read a play by a woman; Tracy Letts fooled me with his name. You can tell how in tune with the theatrical world I am by that admission. Regardless, Mary Page Marlowe was a drat good read. The play follows the life of this one woman from her birth to her death, though not at all in that order. The disjointed chronology of its scenes, with neither a traditional narrative nor a shocking last reveal, blends hope with memory. It’s a strange play; its final scene is the title character at the dry cleaner, for instance. I found it deeply moving, though, and well worth my time. 14. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, by Charles Petzold This book has a mission: to take your from zero idea about how computers work on a fundamental level to constructing a computing system with memory, input, and output. It seems ridiculous at first, but Petzold does a drat good job here. He starts with the very basics of circuits and switches, and eventually takes off on a journey through the history of computer hardware. This hardware, such as it is, starts with the simple telegraph relay, and uses the physical properties of these devices to construct simple logic gates, the stereotypical AND, OR, etc. With clear descriptions he takes these logic gates and more exotic things like flip-flop gates (which he also explains) and begins constructing adding machines and RAM. His style is to add just a single useful feature to his machine at each stage, so that the reader can follow along very easily. Or easily, at least, compared to how it would feel looking at an Intel 8080 chip without any preparation. The book falters a bit at this point, since it can’t really motivate the dozens of machine code commands or interpreted language that Petzold begins to introduce without really using. I’d say the last few dozen pages can be ignored, or at least skimmed. But the preceding hundreds are really quite fantastic for someone wanting to understand the physical process of electronic computation. 15. Walking Home - Growing Up Hispanic in Houston, by Sarah Cortez Walking Home is split into two main sections. In the first, the colors of a stained glass window inspire vignettes about the history of Cortez’s family. She explores sickness, faith, parenthood, and dreams in a quasi-mythic retelling of pivotal moments in that history. She writes this section in a kind of lyrical prose style which engaged well. In the second section, Cortez gives poems about her own childhood, in mid-20th century Houston, focusing on the mundane yet meaningful. We see fishing trips to the pond, restaurant visits and hot Texas nights. I admit to getting a cheap thrill out of seeing my city in a different time, but that hook got me reading this very good book so I don’t mind. 1) Read some books. Set a number and go hog wild. - 15/80 written up 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. - Sister Outsider 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. - Mother Night 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). - Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead 9) Read something in translation. - Cockroaches 11) Read something political. - Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? 12) Read something historical. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors 13) Read something biographical. Shrill 14) Read some poetry. Walking Home 15) Read a play. - Mary Page Marlowe 16) Read a collection of short stories. - Pastoralia 23) Read something that you love. - The Skin of Our Teeth
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Feb 20, 2017 20:19
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I need to update with my reads and thoughts because posting is SO HARD, but in the meantime could someone hit me with a wildcard?
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May 21, 2017 21:17
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nerdpony posted:The Global Pigeon by Colin Jerolmack. I wanted to reach back into the thread and thank you for this wildcard; the book had actually been on my radar for a couple of years and once I dove into it, it ending up being one of the highlights of the year for me. I need to get my book list in order to see if I succeeded at the challenge this year; I think I hit more than enough female authors but it's dicey on the non-white side of things. I have some Angela Davis and Arundhati Roy I can zip through if it's close enough...
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Dec 28, 2017 23:24
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My basically-the-entirety-of-the-year post, not including reviews because that would be a little nuts. 16. 10 PRINT CHR?(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, by various authors 17. Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and Empire, by Reese Erlich 18. Information and the Modern Corporation, by James W. Cortada 19. The Eichmann Trial, by Deborah E. Lipstadt 20. Envy, by Joseph Epstein 21. Anger, by Robert A. F. Thurman 22. Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy, by Cherian George 23. Terrorism and the Economy: How the War on Terror is Bankrupting the World, by Loretta Napoleoni 24. Uncertainty in Games, by Greg Costikyan 25. Computing: A Concise History, by Paul Ceruzzi 26. Greed, by Phyllis A. Tickle 27. Sloth, by Wendy Wasserstein 28. Lust, by Simon Blackburn 29. Pride, by Michael Eric Dyson 30. Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty, by Vikram Chandra 31. Content, by Cory Doctorow 32. Context, by Cory Doctorow 33. The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices, by Patrick Westhoff 34. Illegal Procedure: A Sports Agent Comes Clean on the Dirty Business of College Football, by Josh Luchs and James Dale 35. The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling, by David Shoemaker 36. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht, edited by Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. 37. Mother Courage and her Children, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Tony Kushner 38. The Threepenny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willet 39. The Caucasian Chalk Circle, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by James and Tania Stern with W. H. Auden 40. Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde 41. How Do You Kill 11 Million People? by Andy Andrews 42. More Than A Score, edited by Jesse Hagopian 43. Syrian Dust, by Francesca Borri 44. Cockroaches, by Scholastique Mukasonga 45. Pastoralia, by George Saunders 46. Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? edited by Joe Macaré, Maya Schenwar and Alana Yu-lan Price 47. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, by Lizzie Collingham 48. Class War: The Privatization of Childhood, by Megan Erickson 49. The Plague, by Albert Camus 50. Your Orisons May Be Recorded, by Laurie Penny 51. The Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals, by Donald Prothero 52. Brecht Sourcebook, edited by Carol Martin and Henry Bial 53. The Faith Healers, by James Randi 54. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman 55. The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman 56. The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman 57. Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone 58. Two Serpents Rise, by Max Gladstone 59. Full Fathom Five, by Max Gladstone 60. Last First Snow, by Max Gladstone 61. Four Roads Cross, by Max Gladstone 62. Brave New Ballot, by Aviel D. Rubin 63. Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow 64. A Burglar’s Guide to the City, by Geoff Manaugh 65. Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission, by Barry E. Friedman 66. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, by Sidney Mintz 67. Jagannath, by Karin Tidbeck 68. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong 69. Trans: A Memoir, by Juliet Jacques 70. Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, by David Gerard 71. Necropolis: London and its Dead, by Catharine Arnold 72. Africa’s World War, by Gerard Prunier 73. Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay 74. The Great Siege: Malta 1565, by Ernle Bradford 75. Longitude, by Dava Sobel 76. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, by Thomas Ligotti 77. The Hindus: An Alternative History, by Wendy Doniger 78. To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, by Cris Beam 79. Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, by Lindy West 80. Her Body and Other Parties: Stories, by Carmen Maria Machado 81. My Life On the Road, by Gloria Steinem 82. Motherland, Fatherland, Homelandsexuals, by Patricia Lockwood 83. Drawn to the Dark: Explorations in Scare Tourism, by Chris Kullstroem 84. The Arab of the Future, by Riad Sattouf 85. The Global Pigeon, by Colin Jerolmack 86. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami 87. The Princess Diarist, by Carrie Fisher 88. Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur 89. Marijuana: A Short HIstory, by John Hudak 90. The Disaster Artist, by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell 91. Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren 92. The Truth Matters, by Bruce Bartlett 93. The Sun and Her Flowers, by Rupi Kaur 94. The Job, by Steve Osborne 95. But What if We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman 96. The Cost of Living, by Arundhati Roy 97. Power Politics, by Arundhati Roy 98. War Talk, by Arundhati Roy 99. Public Power in the Age of Empire, by Arundhati Roy 100. An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, by Arundhati Roy 101. No Is Not Enough, by Naomi Klein 102. Girl Walks into a Bar… by Rachel Dratch 103. Sex Object, by Jessica Valenti 104. American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang 105. Trust Me, I’m Lying, by Ryan Holiday 106. Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher 107. Tell Me How It Ends, by Valeria Luiselli 108. As You Wish, by Cary Elwes 109. The Berlin-Baghdad Express, by Sean McMeekin 110. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi 111. The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide, by Azeem Ibrahim 112. Habibi, by Craig Thompson 113. …Isms: Understanding Art, by Stephen Little 114. Yes, Please, by Amy Poehler 115. The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas For each entry I'm just posting the best 1) Read some books: 115/80 2) 20% women: 37% Pretty good there... 3) 20% non-white: 21% But I just barely eek that one out 4) Read at least one book by an LGBT author. Sister Outsider 5) Read at least one TBB BoTM and post in the monthly thread about it. Mother Night 6) Read a book someone else in the thread recommends (a wildcard!) The Global Pigeon 7) Read something that was recently published (anything from after 1st January 2016). Homegoing 8) Read something which was published before you were born. The Great Siege: Malta 1565 9) Read something in translation. Cockroaches 10) Read something from somewhere you want to travel. The Hindus: An Alternate History 11) Read something political. Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? 12) Read something historical. The Arab of the Future 12a) Read something about the First World War. The Berlin-Baghdad Express 13) Read something biographical. Sex Object 14) Read some poetry. Walking Home 15) Read a play. Mary Page Marlowe 16) Read a collection of short stories. Her Body and Other Parties 17) Read something long (500+ pages). Africa's World War 18) Read something which was banned or censored. The Hate U Give 19) Read a satire. Three Parts Dead 20) Read something about honor. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running 21) Read something about fear. Drawn to the Dark 22) Read something about one (or more!) of the seven sins. Sloth, Envy, Pride, Lust, Anger, Greed... my library didn't have Gluttony from this series, unfortunately 23) Read something that you love. The Skin of Our Teeth Glad to have prevailed this year. Next time my challenge will include posting...
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Jan 9, 2018 05:25
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