Tag: books

The Returning by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Not sure how I ended up with this book, but it's been sitting on my ereader for years.

The writing was pretty good, but the antagonist was kind of a Saturday-morning-cartooon, mustache-twirling, caricature.

Civil unrest in a sci-fi setting.

The Worlds I See by Fei-Fei Li

Our most recent book-group book at work. A sort-of-memoir, sort-of-history of the work on artificial-intelligence and machine-learning systems.

Though I found it a little grandiose to compare the (impressive, yes) improvements in AI capabilities of the past ~5 years to anything close to the revolution in chemistry and physics that was quantum mechanics and relativity.

Axiomatic by Greg Egan

This is a collection of short stories by Greg Egan which I really enjoyed. The stories are usually hard-sci-fi nuggets--explorations of "what if this were true about the universe?"

Some really great, though-provoking pieces.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks

Sacks recounts the development of modern chemistry through the lens of his childhood in England before, during, and after World War II.

A time when an 11-year-old kid could wander down to a supply shop and come home with all manner of caustic, toxic, and explosive chemicals to play with.

Wild in how fundamentally different his youth was from anything that would be considered "normal" today.

The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker

I bought this way back in 2016, but only just got around to reading it.

It describes the 14 principles that embody the "Toyota Way" of doing manufacturing--much of which has come to be known, in part, as "lean."

I think perhaps the most distinct aspect from traditional American approaches is the requirement that systems be viewed holistically. Demanding that each individual process get faster/cheaper/better may get you worse results than are otherwise possible.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner

This was my most recent pick for the tech-books book group I meet with at work.

Bell Labs was a ridiculously influential organization of the 20th century: the transistor, undersea telephone cables, microwave data relays, satellite telecommunications, cell phones, fiber optics, Unix, the C programming language--just to name a few. All that, so much more, and the foundation of Information Theory.

It's kind of crazy how much of the modern world was influenced by that organization.

The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov, translated by Yisrael Markov

What if The Lord of the Rings were just the revisionist history of the warmongering men and elves of Middle Earth? In this retelling of the events of the War of the Ring we see Mordor as a civilization on the cusp of industrial revolution. Gandalf convinces the men and elves that if Mordor's technological progress isn't stopped immediately then the magic- and tradition-based societies of the rest of Middle Earth are doomed.

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder

This is the non-fiction story of Deogratias, born in Burundi (I hesitate to say "true" because, as Kidder acknowledges, it's impossible to corroborate many of the events). Deo was a third-year medical student working an internship in a rural medical clinic when Burundi erupted into another wave of sectarian violence.

After surviving a horrifying journey filled with abject brutality he finds himself with a chance at safety in the guise of a series of plane tickets to NYC and a falsely obtained business visa to enter the country.

He speaks French and Kirundi, but not a word of English. In a few years, through the persevering kindness of strangers and his own grit, he graduates from Columbia University, restarts medical school at Dartmouth, and eventually returns to Burundi to open the medical clinic he'd been working for since childhood.

My second book in French has been an ongoing project for several months now and I finally finished it this month. Geist: Les héritiers de Nikola Tesla is an alternate-history murder mystery. The language it uses is significantly more complex than La Planète des singes and contains many words made up by the author for the story. So it took me a while to get through it. I'm quite certain I missed a lot of nuance, but I got the general story.

Set in Paris, it tells the story of an investigator on a murder case in a world of psychic powers and wireless electricity--set in motion by Tesla.

Doors of Sleep is the book the girls picked out for me for Christmas.

Zax has a problem. When he falls asleep he is transported/teleported/jumped to an alternate universe. When he finds somewhere safe and comfortable he stays awake as long as he can. When he lands somewhere dangerous he drugs himself into a quick escape.

Life is pretty bleak--and then it gets worse--but also better.