Worked lots. Read some. Life was busy enough, that I did not have time for my beloved Sherlock this month. Good reading month overall.
The Rust Programming Language, Carol Nichols, Steve Klabnik & Chris Krycho#
The second best programming programming book I’ve read in my whole … uh … period that I have been learning programming.
The best one still remains the Structure and Intepretation of Computer Programs. If you find the book too long or dense, then this equally long but extremely enjoyable video series by Brian Harvey is just the ticket.
And to digress a bit more, I came to the Rust programming book after listening to the best programming language podcast1 I’ve ever heard. And to see Chris from the podcast listed as an author on the cover of the book, made me so very happy! :)
The best thing I could probably tell you about the book, is that it tackles a language that is hard, acknowledges that fact, and then works its way through it bit by bit, patiently and thoroughly explaining everything along the way.2 This feels very Economist-y in the way that the authors speak with one voice. It is hard to tell who has written what. Along with the Dummies book below, this formed a perfect beginner duology for me. I am now confident enough to go strike out on my own, writing Rust.
It’s online. It’s free. And if you’re in the mood to tackle something moderately hard, have at it.
Rust All-in-One for Dummies, Paul McFedries#
This book either fills in the few gaps that The Rust Programming Language has or explains the harder stuff with different points of view. And adds enough baby real life projects to do along the way. Reading this felt more like reinforcement, than repetition.
It is really well written. Everything is really well explained.
Seinfeld, Acquired Podcast#
The episode is about the show, not the man. I’m not really a fan of the man. But I did love the show.
This was fun to listen, because I’m old enough to have seen this whole story unfold myself and it was fascinating to listen to others talk about the time through an anthropological/archeological lens.
In addition to Larry and Jerry’s enormous talent, the epsiode relates how the show also owed its enormous success to so many things being the way they were at the time and to so many things aligning just right. The one thing I will always tip my hat off to the man, was the way he went out on top.
Loved the episode.
Apocalypse Ranger, Sarah Hawke#
The world’s come to an end and everything is rotten. A ranger finds an elf with healing powers in the wastelands and tries to make his way back home. Apocalyptic, escapist, fantasy. Fun. (Adults only though.)
Extinction, Aletheia Preston & Douglas Preston#
From one half of the duo who brought me Agent Pendergast!
Douglas Preston is now half of a new duo with his daughter Aletheia Preston.
The book is enjoyable, but I’m not sure if it would have sold if it was by another unknown but equally talented author.
And it tripped me up a bit because it was not Pendergast. I missed the locquaciousness.
This is very workman-like prose driving an enjoyable plot, which falters a bit at times.
The premise is fun. Murder in Jurassic Park! Two cops buddy up to find a killer!
I’m going to read the next one as well. I really want to see where Cash and Colcord (the cop buddies) go next.
Pendergast: The Beginning, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child#
Now this is what we are talking about.
Totally reckless, yet always cool (even in his stuffy suit), Agent Pendergast returns!
This is an origin story and some of the origins are still obscured.
Would have been better to title it: Pendergast: The First Case.
But the setting and the prose always suck me right in.
Others, however, were right up near the shoulder: stinking of goofer dust and other hoodoo wards that kept off the evil eye, their entire facades covered in green masks of tree-of-heaven, Chinese wisteria, or other invasive vines. Locally, they were known as “shantybellum” houses. People had lived here, albeit sparsely, at one time—but that time was long past, and with the Gulf fast encroaching, they never would again.
A Blink of the Screen, Terry Pratchett#
This is a very sombre moment for me. I don’t quite know when I decided in my youth, that I would read Pratchett only after he finished Discworld. But they just kept coming! And then Terry died. And when he did, I did not quite have the heart to start.
I need comfort now though. And wisdom. And fun with words and joy with language. And Terry Pratchett is just the man to do it.
This is a series of short stories. Some from Discworld, some not. All fun!
I specially loved, The Sea and Little Fishes, because it reminded me of the cranky older mentor relationship, I have with Piyu. The now grown up, young, sensible adult trying to figure out why the crazy old kook is crazy and just how much. And all the spats and arguments that go with it. A few choice bits …
Granny looked as though she was fighting some serious internal battle, and then she added in throwaway tones, ‘Kettle’s on. You’d better come in.’
Nanny relaxed. Maybe there were some customs even Granny Weatherwax wouldn’t defy, after all. Even if someone was your worst enemy, you invited them in and gave them tea and biscuits. In fact, the worser your enemy, the better the crockery you got out and the higher the quality of the biscuits. You might wish black hell on ’em later, but while they were under your roof you’d feed ’em till they choked
Nanny sighed.
‘Sometimes nice is worth tryin’, Esme,’ she said.
‘I never does anyone a bad turn if I can’t do ’em a good one, Gytha, you know that. I don’t have to do no frills or fancy labels.’
Nanny sighed. Of course, it was true. Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them. But Nanny knew that people don’t always appreciate right.
Like old Pollitt the other day, when he fell off his horse. What he wanted was a painkiller. What he needed was the few seconds of agony as Granny popped the joint back into place. The trouble was, people remembered the pain.
You got on a lot better with people when you remembered to put frills round it, and took an interest, and said things like, ‘How are you?’ Esme didn’t bother with that kind of stuff because she knew already. Nanny Ogg knew too, but also knew that letting on you knew gave people the serious willies.
Her friend’s glare should have made the air sizzle.
‘Oh? So that’s what you think of me? That’s what we’ve come to, have we?’
‘Letice thinks we should move with the times—’
‘Well? I moves with the times. We ought to move with the times. No one said we ought to give them a push. I expect you’ll be wanting to be going, Gytha. I want to be alone with my thoughts!’
Granny wasn’t exactly friendless, but what she commanded mostly was respect. People learned to respect stormclouds, too. They refreshed the ground. You needed them. But they weren’t nice.
The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett#
And this is just pure joy. :)
My first discworld novel.
I have often envied other folks their first steps into I world or a work I have fallen in with. Because I would love to read it once again for the first time.
With Discworld I shall be savouring everything slowly as I go!
I have one wee confession to make though. This is the one Discworld novel I have read.
All I remember of it though is the joy it brought me and the fact that I decided to wait.
This was sheer delight. I loved every little bit of it.
I have already jumped into the next one, to see what happens with our daring, intrepid heroes :)
The Catholic Church: A History, William R. Cook (The Great Courses)#
This satisfied my itch to learn more about why the Catholic church is the way it is, with all its history and idiosyncracy. I am reading another book on the same topic as well, but that one is so enjoyable and so thorough, I am going to take a while before I’m done.
This one was more easily finished.
Professor Cook is an apologist for the Church, but in my eyes, he does a mostly even handed history of the Church. He acknowledges most of its faults and does not quite gloss over them, but neither does he go into detail like he does the rest of the topics.
And with that caveat out of the way, the course was lovely. The path from its earliest change from community to something that the powers-that-be co-opted and then made dogmatic and heirarchical, through the centuries to today where the Church is, is a two millenia long story of persecution in all forms (to and by the Catholics), and peace and theology and mysticism and scholastic thought.
This was extremely satisfying to have completed! It was eye opening. I learned lots!
Writing Creative Nonfiction, Tilar J. Mazzeo (The Great Courses)#
Probably the last book, I will read on the craft, for now.
Nonfiction writers have a sort of contract with readers:
We are not allowed to make anything up. We must be rigorous reporters of lived experience. Our impulses must be documentary.
And as long as we honour this fact, this contract, we can bring all the rest of the tools in fiction to bear on our writing to contrive into existence, Creative Nonfiction. And Professor Mazzeo shows us just how it’s done.
From how to share uncomfortable truths, to how to express an opinion alongside the facts, to figuring out narrative perspectives to being a writer; she teaches it all. Definitely worth the time.
The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, Ann Patchett#
Ok, one more book on writing 😂
This is a teensy little thing.
And then it kicked my butt. Because it is dense as well :)
Ann Patchett packs a lifetime of wisdom into these slim pages.
In short, the story is in us, and all we have to do is sit there and write it down. But it’s right about there, the part where we sit, that things fall apart
For me it’s like this: I make up a novel in my head. […] This is the happiest time in the arc of my writing process. The book is my invisible friend, omnipresent, evolving, thrilling. During the months (or years) it takes me to put my ideas together, I don’t take notes or make outlines; I’m figuring things out, and all the while the book makes a breeze around my head like an oversize butterfly whose wings were cut from the rose window in Notre Dame. This book, of which I have not yet written one word, is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.
And so I do, even though I dread it. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach into the air and pluck the butterfly up. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done, I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing—all the color, the light and movement—is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s the book.
The journey from the head to the hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write—and many of the people who do write—get lost
The course that Allan set me on is one that has guided my life ever since. It is the course of hard work. It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and the discipline to bring it out.
And with said exhortation to hard work, I begin my next month of joyous reading! :)
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