Mykal Machon
As someone who always advocates for understanding the fundamentals, this books is awesome and has changed how I write software in general. I am very rarely writing code where I have to think about the operating systems but understanding operating systems internals has surprisingly saved me time lots in the few months since reading this book.
Definitely worth a read if you've wanted to understand how operating systems work but the topic has always seemed to be unapproachable. If you have a basic computing science background this book is pretty approachable!
Fanstatic world building in a norse fantasy setting with distinct and interesting characters and concepts. While I had some issues with repetive phrases and descriptions, my biggest issue with this book is how insanely slow the plot was. The first half of the book was a slog, the third quarter was better, and the last quarter was awesome.
A really fun mashup of body horror, sci-fi, abrahamic religious reference, and conspiracy theories. I really loved reading through these stories; especially with how well they tie back in throughout.
If you're not a fan of stories that don't answer every question by the end you probably won't enjoy this much. For me, it was a perfect level of open-ended.
Loved this quick read in “The Captive's War” universe. As per the novella's from the Expanse, this does a fantastic job at building out the series universe all while telling an enticing story that explores the ever-encroaching impacts of technology on the human experience. The “Live Suit” tech in this book makes soldier's effectively super human, but it's not clear how much of their humanity the tech takes away.
Fantastic collection of short story horrors. I first heard of Christian from the Creep Cast podcast; they read a few of his stories and they were fantastic so I went looking for more.
If you're looking for fresh ideas in the format of short horror, this is it! Can't wait to see what else Christian comes up with.
I enjoyed The fall of Hyperion a lot more than the first book in the series but it's still not living up to the hype for me unfortunately.
I love when Sci-fi authors go into depth on how future systems work both technically and in society. The societal and interpersonal implications of the “Hyperion” universe on it's inhabitants is well covered so far in this series. Unfortunately, the books seem to leave a lot of the crunchy technical explanations out. I still enjoyed the book, but I think one of the reasons it's not hitting quite as hard as I'd like it to is the lack of “hard” science fiction goodies.
The other piece that's been irking me about this series is the seemingly ever-present misogyny. Nine out of ten times, if the author is writing about a women, they're somehow minimized, sexualized, compared to a man, or put into the context of their male partner. Early on, I thought this was an intentional flaw in some the character's and gave it a pass. It's presence in this book seemed more trite. Obviously you can't hold a book from the 80s to today's standards. That said, I've read a lot of Ursula K. Le Guin and Isaac Asimov from the same time period or older; I didn't notice this in any of their books. It was present enough here that it left a bad taste in my mouth.
TLDR: This is how I felt about Robert Neville throughout the whole read.
While I found some of the concepts in this book interesting, I found the protagonist so unrelatable and unlikable from the start that it ruined the book for me.
I do realize that Robert sort of being a monster in the new world is the whole point, but I think this was supposed to be a twist at the end, not something I felt throughout the whole read. I do realize that realistically, any person in this situation would not be mentally sound. That said, from the neck-breaking, 180 degree shift that is “this vampire reminds me of my dead daughter” to “I want to sexually assault this vampire” that happens more than once in the book, to the pseudo scientific experiments on the infected (that also look like his daughter!). The guy comes across as a self-righteous, creepy, overconfident weirdo from the first chapter on.
I didn't ever really feel conflicted in my dislike of Robert. The exception being when he tries to connect with the stray dog near the middle of the story. Around that point I started to think that there may be some room for Robert to have some moral redemption. He had seemed to drop the weird fetishization of the vampires. Plus, who can't related to wanting to pet a dog! After the dog passes, he seems to realize that the vampires are still alive, just infected, and likely mentally struggling. After that revelation, he decides he needs to hunt and kill his infected neighbor (what?). From there, he didn't really recover in my eyes. He knew that he was killing conscious beings, and just kept at it!
Beyond my issues with Robert Neville as a sympathetic anti-hero, some of the horror in this book is dated to the point that I burst out laughing while reading it. The concept of vampires waiting outside the protagonist's house and flashing him to try and lure him outside but not being smart enough to open a door is probably the earliest example of this.
All of that said, I realize that this was an early entry in the modern psychological horror scene, and it much of it seems dated because it inspired today's tropes. I think I would have liked this book a lot more if Neville didn't seem so far-off from where I would mentally be in his shoes.
If you want a condensed intro to ansible, docker, kubernetes, and Linux this is probably a great place to start. It provides a solid intro to the concepts you'd need to work as a developer, or jr. SRE/sysadmin. It provides examples with a companion GitHub repo, and expects you to work while reading the book. If you have some significant experience with these tools it might even be worth the read for a few tidbits, new tools, and some tips; which is mostly what I came away with.
My biggest issues is that the pacing feels a bit off at times. For example, the book provides a relatively quick summary of docker containers and then throws you right into the deep-end of Kubernetes. That said, it does a great job at covering the general surface area and providing further reading or resources if you're interested; just don't expect this book to be at all comprehensive.
I'll definitely be recommending to others looking to get started in working with and managing applications hosted on Linux or in Linux containers as it provides some solid fundamentals.
As a team lead with a passive interest in management, this book was a great intro to what engineering management could (and should) look like.
I took a whole ton of notes and will definitely be using this as a reference moving forward. If I'm being honest, I'm surprised by how many takeaways I'm walking away with. If you're in any sort of leadership position in tech I'd definitely suggest giving this a read.
This is a quick, fun read. If you like Adam Ellis elsewhere, you'll like “Bad Dreams in the Night”.
If you're going into this expecting “pulp” horror anthologies with great art that's exactly what this book has to offer.
While some of the stories offer unique concepts there's definitely heavy use of trope and cliche; if you're looking for something that's going to blow your mind, build tension, or really catch you off guard this probably isn't it.
4.5/5
I got this book as a gift from my wife and I was a little skeptical. I love me some hank green TikToks and some blog brothers, but I never knew him to be a writer.
I am so glad that I took a chance and read this! It's probably one of my favorite books I've read in the last year. It is a little millennial cringe (ala Hank Green) but it's endearing! The intersection between scifi, internet culture, and the effects of fame kept me constantly interested in something.
My only gripe is that some of the characters were a little flat but given the narrator's (April) tendencies this actually arguably makes sense. To keep it spoiler free I'll leave that there.
Would definitely recommend this to fellow chronically online scifi nerds.
3.5 stars or 7/10
Solid plot, characters, and humour but it just didn't grab me in the way I hoped it would for some reason. General exploration of what it means to be human is always a hit for me and the author introduced some perspectives that I had not ever heard of or considered. I would definitely read other books by this author!
This is a great read if you're in the mood for some head-spinning concepts.
Lots of really great ideas that are still swimming around in my head a week or so after finishing the book.
That said, a lot of the stories don't really mesh well together, concepts are not always explained without contradiction, and overall a lot of the ideas feel unfinished. I think the author thought so too, given their later work.
I've been reading through qntm's catalog from newest to oldest. Lots of concepts within this book are explored in-depth in their more recent books (Ra, There is no Antimemetics Division, Valuable Humans in Transit) are touched on in “Fine Structure”. If you liked those books, you'll likely enjoy this one even if it's just interesting to see how qntm's ideas evolved over time.
A quick and fun sci-fi read that fails to have a cohesive narrative. The first half of the book consists of several bite-sized stories about “Ed” and his college roommate. These stories are quirky little vignettes that usually toy with 1 or 2 gear-grinding sci-fi concepts. If the whole book would have kept up with that formula this would be a 4+ star rating for me.
Unfortunately the concept starts to fall apart when an overarching narrative is shimmed between chapters. While the chapters are still relatively encapsulated, there are a number of macguffins and messy story points that sort of kill the magic present in the first half in my opinion.
There is also a weirdly sexist description of a “geek girl” that the main characters are friends with. That entire chapter could be taken out or rewritten and the book would be better for it; it soured the experience for me.
I've read most of QNTMs other work and this is my least favorite so far. It's still a quick and fun read but it won't stick with me like Ra or VHIT have.
Picked this book up for a whopping $2.50 at a second hand book store today and skimmed through it for around an hour. The first half of the book is a standard dictionary and the last half acts as a computing how-to guide.
I was surprised at how relevant so many of the terms listed in the first half still were today. Some terms have definitely evolved but many remain unchanged despite techs leaps and bounds forward over the last 22 years.
The last half of the book is titled “an introduction to personal computers”. It explains concepts like “using a pointer” and lists useful idioms like “when the chips are up, the computer hums”. This section was definitely a lot more fun to skip through for all the outdated references and devices listed.
Overall the book was likely a pretty solid guide for getting into computers in 2000 (when it was originally released). Now it's a bit of a comedic time capsule of computers in the early aughts that's worth a quick skim.
One of the best sci-fi and speculative fiction anthologies I've ever read. I started it yesterday and read all but the last chapter in my first sitting. I'll try to keep this review spoiler free, but I will be discussing format and general concepts so be warned!
Some stories breathe fresh life into otherwise well explored topics and others prospect concepts I've yet to come across. To avoid spoilers, I won't go into detail but if you're interested in the intersection between humanity, sentience, the internet and technology in general you'll like most of the stories in this anthology.
qntm uses varied mediums to tell their stories ranging from a series of “tweets”, a blog post, wiki articles and your standard third-person limited fiction perspective. The shifting format kept me on my toes from story to story and really made the book feel fresh all the way through. Many of the stories feel like they were pieces of media or documentation snatched right out of an alternate reality, or some near future largely in part to the format's they're written in.
I was also impressed with the level of world-building done in such short stories (especially so in the wiki articles). So much is left unsaid about these worlds, and I was left after most story's theory crafting about the surrounding situations mentioned in passing and the term's left undefined.
If you love short and sweet sci-fi that's not afraid to get a little technical, I can't recommend this book more!
The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
TLDR: If you're in IT and you keep hearing about dev-ops and have no idea what it means, this is a good starting point! It preaches good ideas and first-principles for dev-ops. Just don't expect any practical advice on implementing the concepts discussed in the book. For that you'll have to look elsewhere. Start here, don't end here! Please!
I read this as part of a professional development effort at work. My read took just over a month and I found it to be one of the most engaging “tech & business” books I've ever read. The book doesn't dig much further than the basics of what dev-ops “is” and what it looks like for a business to start the transition from the “old school” IT cost-center model. That said, it does explain a lot of the common “gotcha's”, objections, and wins that can be found on the path into dev-ops-land at your org from a management perspective.
I have three primary issues with the book:
If you have experience with what “modern” dev-ops looks like (multiple deploys a day, well-standardized testing and automation, heavy integration of IT in business, etc.) the contents of this book really feel like they're just scratching the surface of what's possible. if you are in that camp (like I was), I would recommend reading this all with a grain of salt and expecting to have to do a whole-lot of independent reading and work on how to connect the dots from the slightly-agile situation the fictional Phoenix project is at by the end of the book to something that resembles modern practices.
The book is very clearly aimed at management and there aren't many useful tips in here for the “practice” of dev-ops. This book won't tell you how to implement CI/CD, how to evaluate the trade-offs between cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments, how to build trust with your business and integrate IT as a value-add for them, etc. It will tell you what those things are and that you should do them, but that's about it.
The “novel” part of the book really is a thin veneer on top of a dev-ops intro manual. A useful tool for getting ideas to stick, don't go in expecting a character arc or exciting drama. This is basically a recounting of a bunch of business meetings with some characters and relatable situations slapped in-between to get the points across.