Currently Reading

• A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire
• High Performance Python, by Micha Gorelick & Ian Ozsvald
• I really enjoyed Serious Python, and I’m looking forward to a more in-depth study of similar concepts.
• Overcoming Gravity, by Steven Low
• I’ve always enjoyed bodyweight exercises, but I’ve lost a lot of upper body strength over the years. I’m really enjoying this book as a way to figure out how to regain proportional strength.
• Raven’s Witness, by Hank Lentfer
• Richard Nelson was a longtime Sitkan who died last November, leaving a gaping hole in our community. But he lived an inspiring life and I’m happy to have known him, even though I didn’t know him well. I really enjoyed Hank Lentfer’s Faith of Cranes, and I want to read this biography of Nels slowly. I started it on a foggy mountaintop last week, and I’m just going to keep bringing it with me to the mountains and read it little by little, surrounded by quiet and wild nature.

Recently Read

• Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy
• I enjoy reading about the history of the computing era, and I’m happy to have finally read this book. The writing is pretty dated at times; there’s more than one section that focuses on efforts to get some young programmer “laid”. Also, halfway through the book I wished fervently to never hear or read the word “hacker” again. But this history was written at an important moment in the transition from large mainframes to home microcomputers, and until someone rewrites that history well this will remain an important book for many people.
• Working in Public, by Nadia Eghbal
• This was a really good book. I found Nadia Eghbal’s observations about the open source ecosystem really insightful and helpful in figuring out how to manage large open and semi-open projects. We’ve been told that digitally-produced goods have zero marginal cost. But that’s not true for producers and maintainers; there’s a steadily increasing workload as a project grows in popularity. I highly recommend this to anyone involved in software development, and the development of open resources of any kind.
• On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder
• Unfortunately, this is a book that all of us in the US should be reading right now.
• Serious Python, by Julien Danjou
• This is a great book, covering lots of bigger-picture Python concepts that I’ve been aware of, but haven’t fully understood or used yet. (full review)
• The Last Human, by Lee Bacon
• This is another book my son read recently, and I wanted to be able to discuss with him. Also, I am just loving reading these YA books; they’re interesting, and so much lighter than the books I usually read, even if the topics are serious.
• The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
• The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
• My 9yo just finished reading this, and I wanted to be able to discuss it with him in detail.
• Hiding in Plain Sight, by Sarah Kendzior
• Down Girl, by Kate Manne
• Fundamentals of Data Visualization, by Claus O. Wilke