Reading comes to us in waves - but they rarely hit both of us at the same time. One of us would be tearing through books while the other one’s in a slump. Then envy will rear it’s ugly, but useful, head and the other person will whine a bit and catch-up. It’s silly but it works! Here’s what we’ve enjoyed reading
- [V]eena & [G]autam
[V] Jingo and Thud! by Terry Pratchett - I picked up Jingo from the library, came home, had a sense of déjà vu…only to find my own copy at home. In fact, I own both books but had completely forgotten that I did! Sam Vimes is my favorite character in Discworld. He reminds me of my dad. Stoic. Uncompromisingly righteous yet compassionate. And mildly grumpy all the time. I love all members of the night-watch and love love love how they add a new watchman/woman in each book. Interspecies diversity - check. Politics - check. Intrigue - check. Murder - check! The books have them all. Give the series a read if you want something hilarious and fantastical. Get ready to be transported to the magical yet disgusting Ankh-Morpork. Here’s my favorite paragraph from Thud…
“Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even 2 minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five minutes, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go for five minutes, then you'd go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours...and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six o'clock, prompt. Every day. Read to young Sam. No excuses. He'd promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.”
[V] You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane - A seminal work about the limitations and power of Artificial Intelligence algorithms. She explains algorithms like markhov chains and evolutionary algorithms with enough detail and simplicity. It was published 4 years ago and hence is unsullied by all the hype.
[V&G] Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot series - If you’re world-weary and need something soothing, Becky Chambers is for you. Her sci-fi is always optimistic, healing and really opens the reader to a different kind of future - one which we have almost given up on envisioning. A future in which we’re kinder and smarter and have a good handle on the technology and the world we are shaping today. We both love her writing. Favorite line:
“We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value”.
[G] Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner - For years, I avoided watching shows like Mad Men or Silicon Valley. “I already work in advertising/tech. I don’t need to see it on screen.” I made an exception for this book. Having recently stepped away from corptech, I wanted to borrow someone else’s words to make sense of the place it had inhabited in my life. The attention to detail is incredible. I found myself reading aloud so many passages to V every few pages. The way she delivers some of the most absurd truths about the industry with straight-faced-satire is something I aspire to be able to do. It did what I was afraid those TV shows won’t - be brutally reflective without navel-gazing. Here’s one of my (many many) favorite passages:
“All these people, spending their twenties and thirties in open-plan offices on the campuses of the decade's most valuable public companies, pouring themselves bowls of free cereal from human bird feeders, crushing empty cans of fruit-tinged water, bored out of their minds but unable to walk away from the direct deposits—it was so unimaginative. There was so much potential in Silicon Valley, and so much of it just pooled around ad tech, the spillway of the internet economy.”
[G] Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh - There’s an unwritten rule in our household that we’ll own and read everything Ottessa writes. The grotesqueness of the world and our minds are handled exquisitely in every chapter. The story is set in a medieval village, where destitute peasants work to support a feudal lord - it’s an allegory of pretty much any civilization that has ever existed - including the current modern malaise we find ourselves in. If you’re sick and tired of toxic positivity and people asking you to shout affirmations into the mirror, Ottessa’s got the fix for you.