2013 in Books (continued)

I've many things I've mean to post, but being early-jan-going-on-mid-jan, I'd better post my annual summary of the year's reading.

Last year, I decreased my target number of books to read from 48 to 36, and then missed that by one, having read 35.

I read 16 works of fiction and 19 non-fiction books (about the same percentage as last year). Format-wise, 9 were audiobooks, 10 were paper-based, and 16 were e-books (e-books trending up for me, and audio books trending down probably due to lowering my target for the year.

Favorite non-fiction books of the year for me were: The Information, The Signal and The Noise, the Blind Giant, and Born to Run. Favorite works of fiction: Nexus, Wool, Metatropolis. (see links below)

Here's the list grouped by topic, asterisk next to recommended titles, two asterisks next to highly recommended books.

Business
Good Strategy: Bad Strategy
The Coke Machine

The Signal and The Noise**

Overdressed*  (haven't written review yet, but it's good)
Stewardship (haven't written review yet)

Salt Sugar Fat*

Politics/History
Griftopia*

Culture/Art/Media
The American Way of Eating

Sleights of Mind

Future Perfect

Here's Looking at Euclid

Technology
The Information**
Who Owns the Future
The Blind Giant**

Fitness/Health/Self-help
Becoming a Supple Leopard*
First: What It Takes to Win

How will You Measure Your Life

Born to Run**

Biographies/memoirs
Love with a Chance of Drowning

Fiction
Amped
Makers*

Nexus**
The Hangman's Daughter (haven't written review yet)
You
Wool** (haven't written review yet, but it's good)
Robopocalpse
A Crack in Space

Pirate Cinema*

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (didn't bother writing review)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (didn't bother writing review)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Tears in Rain
Metagame*

Metatropolis**

Graphic Novels
The Technopriests BookOne

2013 in Books

More detailed post later, but here's the gallery version:

Book Review: Pirate Cinema

A while back I started Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema but then got distracted by a few other books I had going. I then spotted the audio-book version at the library and finished it that way.

Pirate cinema is a YA novel that is one part Oliver Twist, one part sci-fi, and one part copyright polemic. The lead character, Trent, a UK teen, runs away from home when his family's internet access is cut off after he downloads too many pirated film clips to us in his own amateur film making. After running off to London, he falls in with some other homeless teens, who show him how to make a living and work the system. They then turn their mischievous ways to fighting unjust copyright regulation.

The treatment of the subject matter is a bit blunt but this is probably ok for a YA novel, so I can see past this. The characters are fun, the story is pretty good.

Two flaws that make me give this a 3/5 rating. First, there were a few tangential bits of reference to tech that felt just forced (e.g. reference to Sugru). Secondly, while I was willing to suspend disbelief that the teens in this story could be as street-smart and tech-savvy as they were portrayed, the degree to which they were "foodies" just broke the illusion for me. There were a number of sections that went on at length about elaborate food prep that it's just not likely a teen, let alone a homeless 'freegan' teen, would eat. It read a bit like maybe Doctorow wrote it when dieting himself and was on a diet while writing it.

Those minor complaints aside, it's a fun ride if you don't mind the copyfight pontification.

Book Review: The Signal and the Noise

Nate Silver's book, The Signal and the Noise, is among my fave non-fiction reads of the year. Highly recommended, especially for anyone that does any kind of modelling/forecasting as part of their work (as is the case for me).

Silver made a name for himself doing baseball forecasting, then moved on do playing professional poker during the 'poker bubble', then came onto the mainstream radar by pretty accurately predicting the 2008 election.

In his book, he looks at the poor track record many branches of science & business have in making predictions. He also points to some areas of success. In running through his examples (baseball, weather, politics, finance and earthquake prediction, to name a few), he looks at a variance of available historical data, signal to noise ratios, etc. He gives a nice overview of Bayesian principles of taking bias into account.

I don't want to give it five stars only because much of his work has been covered by others (e.g. Taleb's Black Swans for example), but it's a great book nonetheless. It made me realize some of the flaws in much of the modelling that we do in my work, and gave me some tools to (hopefully) improve.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't

Book Review: Salt Sugar Fat

Michael Moss' Salt Sugar Fat is a broad-reaching overview of the processed food industry, it's history, leading players, tactics and business models, and most of all, the dependence of the industry on salt, sugar and fat to maximize revenue and profit.

There's plenty in here to open your eyes as a consumer of these products. Hopefully that helps to curb some bad eating habits. Like learning about the negatives of consuming cocaine might prevent you from taking it... only with oreos :-)

For me, I found it most interesting to think about at the high level. Viewed at the macro level and over the long term, it raised interesting questions and showed some successful (and not) examples of how people are tackling them. How does an industry avoid the "local maxima" that may be detrimental to it and it's consumers in the long term? When is giving consumers what they believe they want something you should NOT do? How do you take the high road when your competitors are not? To what degree is industry stewardship YOUR role as a company or as an individual? All interesting food for thought that I believe are applicable to the tech and games industries as well. But that's the subject of another post for another time.

In any case, really good read if either of the above interests you.

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Book Review: Future Perfect

I'm behind on reviews so keeping these short.

The book's main premise is that peer networks, and 'peer progressives' (his term for sort of folk with a neo-progressive mindset and a belief in peer networks as the tool to get us there) will improve many facets of our future.

After a strong opening explaining the concept, the book falls short. Too drunk on the kool-aid for the examples, too short on prescriptive behavior, and not honest enough to take a look at the downsides and possible pitfalls.

Some interesting ideas, but not high on my 'recommended' list

Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age

Book Review: The Coke Machine

The Coke Machine is an interesting history of one of America's most iconic brands and companies. Clearly written with an anti-Coke bias, but even if half of what it accuses is true, then it seriously gives pause. There's an awful lot of smoke for there NOT to be a fire.

The specifics about coke aside, it's an interesting study of how a corporation's immune system kicks into gear to stamp out PR and/or legal problems in the most efficient way possible (which usually isn't actually FIXING the problems they are accused of).

The book covers everything from Coke's coca-leaves-cure all origins to the war against sugar to the murder of unionizing bottling workers. Through them all it shows how Coke simultaneously distances itself from the problem while also doing token moves to deflate the PR problem.

Interesting book, but a little depressing. I'll think twice before drinking their products.

The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink

Book Review: The Crack in Space

I picked up this Philip K Dick book at my local library. It was passable, with some fun bits to it, but the highlight to me was looking at 50-year old futurism  (it was written in '66) and thinking about where the author got it wrong vs not.

The Crack in Space is takes place in a not-too-distant future, where an overpopulated earth has dealt with unemployment and overpopulation by putting people into suspended animation until another planet can be found to go colonize. When a repairman looking at a disfunctional transporter discovers a crack in space that leads to another Earth-like world, the problem may be solved. But of course, it's never as easy as that.

The book, like much 1960's sci-fi, deals with space travel, alternate histories, and other themes that were then de rigeur. There are elements of Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, etc, etc. Even a little free-love thrown in via a giant floating space-brothel.

The story was passable, though perhaps a little predictable. There were some fun characters thrown in there, and a couple unique twists on the above themes.

On the negative side, there were a few things that broke the immersion (over-focusing on racism themes, characters focused on trivialities in the face of massive-scale events, etc).

A highlight for me though, was looking at the then-forward looking view of the future and where it got it wrong. e.g. He foresaw the global nature of satellite TV broadcasts (then a very new thing), but had the character getting up to turn the channel knob on the TV. Or he saw dynamically updated, animated e-newspapers, but they were still distributed the same way and followed the same biz model.

In any case, it was this stuff that gave me pause to think about our own present-day futurism and where we might be getting it wrong.

The Crack in Space

Book Review: Nexus

I really enjoyed Ramez Naam's debut novel, Nexus. As a novel it's a solid debut if a bit formulaic, but as sci-fi/futurism Naam really hits it out of the park.

Nexus is about a bio-tech hacker/researcher who is coerced into working for the government to spy against and ultimate thwart those leading development in his field of research. In this way, it's a very standard average-nerd-in-over-his-head, espionage action-adventure. And even if evaluated only at that level, it's a solid work. If this type of book is your thing, you won't be disappointed.

But what I really loved was the sci-fi trappings of the book. The bio-tech posited in Nexus is a technology to run software on the human brain, to read or change what it's doing, or to run alternate software on it. Three areas are then explored in various ways. The first and least surprising is behavior modification (think of The Matrix's "I know Kung Fu" and you get where this is going). The second is that of the hive-mind, and Naam follows this down several paths of exploration. The third is the concept of a virtual machine. In the ultimate take on "what if you are just a brain in a jar" explored by The Matrix and many others, Naam asks "what if you are just a brain in a jar, and that jar is just a VM running in your REAL brain", he then riffs on this with all the issues around real VMs (rootkits, back-doors, etc). Fun stuff.

Naam uses this sci-fi premise and story to make some points about progress, change, blind obediance to authority, civil liberties and the like. All interesting and most valid, but for me the it was the instruments he constructed to have these discussions that really set the book apart. I can't way to see what he comes up with next.

Nexus

Book Review: Who Owns the Future

This is strike two for me with Jaron Lanier's books. It's too bad, because I really admire his thinking, but I gave a weak review to You Are Not a Gadget, and have to do the same here.

In Who Owns the Future?, Lanier posits that several technology trends threaten to have a long-term negative impact on the middle class, and on the economy in general (which is highly dependent on the existence of a thriving middle class). He asserts that (a) many of today's disruptive technologies and services constitute what he calls "Siren Servers", luring users in and making it difficult to escape, (b) that these do not give fair value back to users for what they put in, and (c) that the result is not going to net out to the new jobs replacing the old, but rather a more efficient system where the middle class loses money to a priviledged few that control those servers.

While initial idea of Siren Servers is one I agree with, and serveral of Lanier's observations are astute, that's where I start to part ways with his thinking.

Many of his arguments and suggested solutions are not only lacking in data, he hasn't even an attempted a simple modelling of them. At the same time, he dismisses the arguments of others for the same reason. For example, he dismisses the claims of those that say musicians can replace lost CD revenues by instead doing live performances, but then asks readers to accept that they can replace those revenues through a system of micro-transaction revenues magically piggy-backed onto the Internet. While proposing this, he offers even a high level examination of the technical feasibility nor a rudimentary attempt at the business model.

As a book that offers some provocative ideas and alternative ways of looking at technology and its impact on economics, it offers some value. But the solutions proposed are as pie-eyed as flying cars and teleportation without providing more than a hand-wave.

 Who Owns the Future?

Book Review: The Blind Giant

A while back I read (and subsequently reviewed) Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. I loved it so much I looked into what else he'd written. I found out that he had a non-fiction work about the impact of technology on business and culture, and so gave it a read.

It's hefty piece of work, talking about the impact of technology on a very wide range of subjects, from the publishing business, to our ability to learn and concentrate, to the impact on politics and life in the public eye. His view of the impact of tech on the publishing business is especially well done, as he's grown up in and around that industry as one of the 'disruptees', and yet is also a technology proponent.

Through the book, the author takes a nuanced, even-handed look at most of these areas of controversy, showing both sides as having some merit. He also tackles it in a way that is entertaining, and still goes deep enough to show that he's done a fair amount of research and thinking on the subjects.

The down side is that he covers broad ground without really reaching a hard conclusion. that might be OK though - as the point is to show that we are evolving in our relationship with technology, and that we don't necessarily know where it will end up, and that it's neither all good nor all bad, but somewhere in between, as will be our end destination.

Book Review: Becoming a Supple Leopard

I finished the book a while back but am just getting around to posting a review.

Kelly Starrett is really well known in the Crossfit community. As a Crossfit gym owner and Doctor of Physical Therapy, he has carved out a really niche of expertise as being the "joint, form and mobility guy" of crossfit. In addition, he has posted a ton of really useful videos to youtube over the past couple years that have made him a well known name. So, when he announced the book, many people pre-ordered and I was one of them.

The book is good, though it has a couple flaws (I'll get to those later). It's organized in two main parts.

The first section deals with categorizing all the major crossfit movements from gymnastics, olympic lifting, etc. Deadlift, Clean & Jerk, Pullups, Handstand Pushups, and many more are organized based on the degree of difficulty (mostly having to do with how dynamically one has to stabilize the load & form). I liked this section, as the logic made a lot of sense, modulo the flaws below.

The second section discusses all the major muscles & joints in the body, and covers a range of techniques of how to better stretch, mobilize, floss, and otherwise work them into better range of motion and stability. This section was also useful, but made less sense to read logically back to back, rather than a reference to build a program from and/or to mix up a program of mobility work.

The flaws I found with the book are threefold. Two are relatively minor.

First, Starrett uses a little too much 'bro-speak' in his language. It's fine, and what we've come to expect, in his videos, which are quite conversational in tone, but in print it feels a little cheesy. This is a minor complaint

Second, given the huge number of videos he's posted in the past, there's probably very little here that you can't get by watching all the videos for free. However, I didn't mind paying some extra to have all of the same information in a logically organized form. It would also be nice to provide some reference/link to any youtube videos where those made sense to add clarity to the text/pictures in the book.

My third, and only major complaint, is that the book could have really benefited from spending some money on an anatomical illustrations. When Starrett talks about torque in the shoulder capsule, it would be nice to have some actuall "under the hood" illustrations.

These things aside, I still found the book useful and would recommend it to all crossfitters.

Book Review: Love With a Chance of Drowning

Picked this one up after seeing it on the shelf at Powells, thinking it would be something me and Alisa would both enjoy. I was right.

It's a biographical account of a sailing voyage. The author meets a man and falls for him, but there are two problems: He's about to embark on crossing the pacific in a small sailboat, and she's petrified of the ocean. She bites the bullet, takes the trip with him, has some adventure, and emerges on the other side a more capable, transformed woman.

There's adventure, humor, romance. It's a fun read.

Book Review: First: What it Takes to Win

I'm not normally one for sports biographies, but am pretty into Crossfit these days so figured I'd pick up Rich Froning's book First: What It Takes to Win

The book was... ok. It's simply written and is a very fast read. Good parts were getting his inside perspective on his training and the different events, what was going through his head mid-competition and the like. Some of the anecdotes from his upbringing were amusing.

The bits about religion and such were not of interest to me but might be good for some.

First: What It Takes to Win

Book Review: You

I finished Austin Grossman's second novel, You, while on vacation last week, and am just getting to writing some thoughts on it now.

It's quite different than his first novel, Soon I will be Invincible, which I loved.

You is the story of a law-school-dropout-turned-game-designer who accepts a job at the game studio his high school friends have turned into a hit-factory. Like his own career, the game studio has hit a point where its future is in question. The creative genius behind the original games is no longer around, the key founders have left, investors threaten to sell off the company, etc. In trying to prove they still have what it takes, the lead character learns about the company's past games and a lot about himself.

It's in this that the book starts to get interesting. The title "You" is a nod to the second-person narrative involved in many games, going back to the old Infocom titles like Zork ("You are standing in an open field, west of a white house, with a boarded front door"). Without spoiling too much, the company's games' characters, world, and eras are metaphors for the high school friends, events and phases of their lives. The author takes a long time to build this up for the reader. To tell the truth it was initially a little slow for me, and some of it was a little over my head. However, when he brings it all together toward the end it really is quite well done, and I found it very satisfying and quite moving.

I know Austin through friends, and knowing his history working at Looking Glass and on games like Ultima Underworld, I can't help but think that there's a lot of history underlying the work. It certainly is the most realistic depiction of what game development is like that I've ever read.

Some reviews I've seen have made reference to Ready Player One, perhaps because of all the references to games of our youth. I don't think that's fair though. This is far more a book about coming of age. More Breaking Away than Wargames, IMHO.

Good book. Recommended.
You

Update: One more thing I meant to add:

From the book's description of one of the studio's games:

"The game's concept demanded intrigue, mystery, glamour, and romance. Accordingly you couldn't just go around murdering people; there was exactly one bullet in the entire game. Instead, Nick could do things like (F)lirt, (Q)uestion, or (W)altz."

I cannot tell you how sad I am that we don't have this game yet.

Book Review: Sleights of Mind

I really enjoyed this book. A couple years back I read a couple books on performing magic as I thought there were some interesting bits that could apply to giving presentations, product demos and the like.

Sleights of Mind does reveal some secrets about how certain magic tricks are performed, but it's written by two neuroscientists who spent years researching magic (collaborating with magicians) to determine how and why we are susceptible to certain illusions and deceptions.

I not only learned a lot, but it's given me a lot to think about in terms of the future of graphics, user interfaces, gaming and more. Fascinating stuff!

Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions

Book Review: Technopriests Vol 1

Picked this up on a friend's recommendation. Was ok, but I didn't really care for it enough to carry on to other volumes. Basic theme: Game Designers rule the universe, creating the ultimate tools that entertain and educate. The lead character aspires to become a member of the guild of techno-priests that design the ultimate games.

Neat them, but not that clever in how it's pulled off, and too much "Heavy Metal-esque" content (gratuitous rape, violence, etc).

The Technopriests Book One: Initiation (Technopriests (DC Comics))

Book Review: Good Strategy - Bad Strategy

I rather enjoyed Good Strategy Bad Strategy. It's a very back-to-basics approach to business strategy that I found a nice reminder that strategy doesn't need to be that complicated. It's very much a one-idea business book but that's OK in this case.

The author starts by outlining what he calls the kernel of any strategy:
- A diagnosis of the situation/problem/opportunity
- A guiding policy that will guide how the organization will react to obstacles/challenges
- A set of clearly defined actions to achieve the goal


While this seems simple enough, it's very useful in cutting through the BS that normally passes as 'strategy'. Additionally, I like they way he frames strategy as hypothesis that is undergoing continual testing and refinement, not something that is authored once and then cast in stone.

Several other things I liked about the book:
- Lots of good case examples. Some well known ones (Apple, Microsoft, GM...) but also some that to me were less well known (International Harvester, many others).
- One case example, Nvidia, is one I have intimate history with, having competed with them in two of my past roles. He didn't nail it all 100%, but it's pretty well summed.

Stuff I didn't like:
- There's a few places in the book where he plays monday morning quarterback, pointing out failed strategies from the recent past, saying he knew better. Would be good if he'd provided proof that he'd called it when he did, vs after the fact. (He may have, but it didn't leap out at me).

In any case, definitely recommended if you are involved with setting strategy for your organization.

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

Book Review: Born to Run

Spotted this at the library in audio book form, and remembered that a couple friends had recommended it to me.

Born to Run is a story of a crazy gringo ex-prize-fighter known as Caballo Blanco (White Horse) living in the Copper Canyons in northern Mexico with the Tarahumara indians, and his plan to put on a deadly long-distance race with some of the worlds most hard-core long-distance runners.

In seeking out the recluse, the author becomes wrapped up in the plan and trains to run the race himself, as he seeks out advice from the gurus of barefoot running in an effort to deal with his own injuries.

The book introduces us to a cast of really interesting characters and the competitive world of long-distance running. It eventually culminates in the story of the race itself, by which time I was rooting for every one of the characters - a good sign he'd told the story pretty well.

The "science" the book attempts to tell about barefoot running and it's evolutionary superiority, the harm that shoes do, etc, is similar to the whole Paleo diet thing - a compelling narrative, but I'm not sure how well backed it is by science. Still, it's got me thinking about it. I may do further research on it. I don't consider this book that research, but a compelling story that at least presents one side of the argument.

Born to Run

Book Review: Here's Looking at Euclid

I fully admit to buying Here's Looking at Euclid based on the title alone. The book is a collection of short explanations of mathematical concepts and mathematical oddities, with a fair bit of history and trivia thrown in for good measure.

Written for the layperson, there's a lot in here most technical folk will already know. Still there was enough history and stuff from alternate branches of mathematics (e.g. people using origami to solve mathematical problems). that I learned some stuff and found it entertaining.

Here's Looking at Euclid: From Counting Ants to Games of Chance - An Awe-Inspiring Journey Through the World of Numbers