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comment by ironpotato
ironpotato  ·  3288 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are you reading? Is it any good?

I quite enjoyed "Ready Player One".

I just bought "The Martian: A Novel" which is about a a guy stuck on mars, it's in the style of a logbook. It should be okay. If this book doesn't satisfy me I think I'm going to go back and start the "Red Mars" series again. I got halfway through book two and then just stopped reading previously.

Oh and I also just finished "Nymphomation" by Jeff Noon. That guys writing style is insane, but the book was actually quite interesting. The end was a bit of a disappointment but it could have been much worse.

Also, sorry for putting all my reading in a comment to you Kaius, I forgot where I was posting for a moment... But on the note of Neal Stephenson, have you read Anathem? That book is a commitment, but it's totally worth it.





Kaius  ·  3288 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yea "Ready Player One" was a good quick read, I enjoyed some of the games references as I recently built a raspberry pi game emulator for my kids and loaded it up with all the old games I used to play. I'm more of a 90's kid but it was still fun.

I read The Martian a few weeks back and thought it was really good. I recommended it to a few friends who like science and space stuff. I haven't seen Red Mars or Nymphomation mentioned before, I might check them out.

I quite like Neal Stephenson and have read some of his stuff like Snow Crash (ok) and Cryptonomicon (Fantastic). I think someone else on hubski recommended Anathem to me but I might try out the Baroque trilogy first. I really like his writing style but I find after I read one of his books I need to take a break and read something else for a while.

Usually I change things up a bit, Fiction followed by Non fiction followed by Sci-fi followed by something random. Almost always as audiobooks.

ironpotato  ·  3286 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, Stephenson can be an exhausting read at times. I wish I had gotten more into Cryptonomicon. I started it but just couldn't get past the beginning.

Anymore the only reading I do is either technical or SciFi/Fantasy. And I haven't read a fantasy book in a couple of months. I've got a couple of autobiographies of musicians I want to get through but my list of books is just never ending...

Kaius  ·  3285 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yea I know what you mean. I started Mongoliad once and just couldn't get into it. I loved Cryptonomicon but there were still large sections that could have been cut out.

I think GRRM ruined fantasy books for me now and I would have a hard time reading anything similar. I occasionally take a look around for something with the same caliber but nothing really hits me.

Biographies are good, I enjoyed Master of the Senate by Robert Caro much more than I should have. He really got into Johnsons life and the amount of detail was amazing.

ironpotato  ·  3284 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If you're looking for good fantasy, there's a series called "Tyrants and Kings". It's kind of SciFi fantasy. But the world is great and the characters are fairly interesting. I read the first book when I was a freshman in high school. I read the second book at some point but never bought the last book. They're also on my list to reread sometime this summer.

Kaius  ·  3284 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You mentioned technical books earlier. What type of stuff? I read a lot of software engineering, api,.net,javascript stuff.

ironpotato  ·  3283 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Same, I've been reading some books on linux system administration and I've been perusing a powershell book. It's powershell 2.0 though. So far I've not learned much that I didn't know from experience powershell wise.

Kaius  ·  3283 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Interesting, i use powershell every day but not for sysadmin, i have a bunch of scripts to simplify build processes and run unit tests etc. I use it in some open source stuff too. I bought powershell in action and its pretty good but usually i end up googling for commands a lot as its not always obvious what you need to do. Goodreads profile: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6634319

ironpotato  ·  3282 days ago  ·  link  ·  

If there's anything I've learned about powershell it's how messy the documentation is. How is that Lean Architecture book? My degree is actually in computer science but I've always done either sysadmin jobs or electronics repair. So I've always been interested in different methods of agile software development. I'm pretty sure SCRUM is still pretty popular but I honestly have no idea how it works...

Kaius  ·  3282 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yea we are going through a large transition to Agile in my company right now, its exciting and painful all at the same time. Lots of talk, whether it works is another story. I like Agiles core concepts but the snake oil salesmen have set up camp and it gets promoted as a solution to all problems. It cannot fix bad code/people/processes for you...

The Lean Architecture book is a recent purchase, not sure about it yet really. I bought it without seeing the rather mixed reviews which has soured me on it a little.