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The Outrun – Amy Liptrot
The Outrun follows the author as she deals with recovery from alcoholism. Part of her journey is heading back to the quiet island she grew up on, Orkney, and then going to an even quieter island to live in a seasonal cabin that is vacant for the winter “off” season. I enjoyed Amy’s reflections on…
Style: Non-fiction -
The Prophet – Harry Marks
There are discussions of child abuse and sexual abuse at the hands of a “religious” leader. Be warned. This book follows the Rich family as dad becomes an outcast in the religious community his brother runs, his daughter gets married to his brother, and his wife is given to another man. While the book was…
Style: Fiction -
Kill it with Fire – Marianne Bellotti
Kill it with Fire is all about how to manage legacy software projects. How do you determine if you need to rewrite it? How do you keep a team motivated while working on a legacy project? How do you stop a current project from becoming legacy full of dead code ready to die? I found…
Style: Non-fiction -
Clear Thinking – Shane Parrish
Shane Parrish, of Farnham Street fame, brings us a book that is intended to help us think clearly. The first half is all about defining the enemies of clear thinking and the second is about putting clear thinking into practice in our lives. While there are many good tidbits to take away from the book…
Style: Non-fiction -
Slow Productivity – Cal Newport
Slow Productivity is Cal Newport’s 4th book looking at how to be productive and maximize your career. As such it blends portions of all the previous books, adding a few bits and rehashing many of the same principles explore in earlier books. As the title suggests it focuses on working a slower pace, on fewer…
Genre: ProductivityStyle: Non-fiction -
Smart Brevity – Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz
Smart Brevity is here to teach you how to cater your communication to the over-stimulated worker, and community, of today. There are 4 Core ideas for the writing system presented. The authors really like their bullet points and figure that’s the correct way to do your communication. Their strongest point is that you probably write…
Style: Non-fiction -
Defiant – Brandon Sanderson
Defiant brings us the final face off between The Superiority and the few races that have gathered with Humanity to say no to the enslavement of everyone. Our protagonist, Spensa, has to wrangle with her reality warping powers as a second being has melded with her soul and she now has to provide the control…
Genre: Science FictionStyle: Fiction -
The Cost of Being a Girl – Yasemin Besen-Cassino
In The Cost of Being a Girl, Besen-Cassino, looks at how part-time employment in the teenage years affects the income of teenage girls vs boys. The biggest takeaway is similar to what I’ve read in the past about wages for women, they make less, are asked to do more emotional labour, and get penalized if…
Style: Non-fiction -
Elantris – Brandon Sanderson
This is the oldest book in Brandon Sanderson’s writing that I’ve read, being published first in 2005. As such I found a few parts of the writing clearly still in development. Unlike other more current books, I was easily able to guess where the author was going early in the book. This didn’t diminish my…
Genre: FantasyStyle: Fiction -
Translation State – Ann Leckie
Translation state takes a look at what it means to be human, and in this case, what it means to belong somewhere. We start meeting our 3 main characters, Enae, Reet and Qven and slowly are exposed to how they don’t belong in the place that they exist. For Qven specifically we see how they’ve…
Genre: Science FictionStyle: Fiction