Timbo

Overcomes it's annoying “sad smart white guy” energy by so clearly illustrating the dread that permeates existence in the mass media age. The constant buzz of information, both mystical and inane, is ever present as an overbearing undercurrent to all the machinery of the story.

Reads extremely well in 2023, as the smartphone/information age has only increased the flow and rate of information blasted upon us.

This is an excellent book that really helps you understand the difference between getting stronger and faster, and training for football.

The point of training should be to develop speed and explosiveness. There are times when other exercises should be used for base strength, but the core component of a good football program should be training for speed and explosiveness.

This book does an excellent job of explaining how and why this is so important for football. The book gives tests and sample workouts that can be used to chart an athlete's progress.

Overall, this a good reference to create a cohesive and targeted football training program.

This is a very in depth book. It delves deeply into the biomechanics of all the events, getting very technical about the biology.

It covers every event in detail and gives a good primer on coaching philosophy.

The target audience seems to be a serious college coach, as a high school coach for a small program, I found it to be an excellent resource, even if it seems geared toward a much more serious athletic program.

This particular book is anachronistic and not very well-translated. However, I seem to be developing a fondness for books of this nature, so perhaps I like it, warts and all. It does not function as an excellent, English-language biography of Euler, but it does function as a collection of some excellent anecdotes, the broad brush-strokes of his life, and some facts about the people he corresponded with.

The authors outstandingly accomplish their goal here.

Data engineering is covered in all its aspects: history, philosophy, and current/previous best practices.

My favorite part of this book is that everything is framed through the lens of business. Data engineering exists to provide business value and the authors here keep reminding of this and urging not to under or over engineer data products.

The pragmatic tone really serves to assist in critical thinking about data projects and identifying the best ways to approach them. Perfection, or even creating a good data product can be hard but this book gives you the tools to approach projects with the right mindset.

Carrie Vaughn's story was quite good but the mvp was Jana Bianca's story. Really haven't read too much sf (maybe a me problen) about pregnancy/childbirth but it is a fundamental and fascinating aspect of human existence and she explores here the possible connections between mothers of alien species.

Before I began this book, I was already grappling with the effect that mass communication technology has had on what it means to be a person.

Starting with cell phones, the communication expectations of most humans fundamentally changed. Most people are assumed to be “always available”. This means that if you are texted or called, it is expected that you will answer your phone or quickly respond to a message.

Social media intensified these expectations, with the creation of a permanent avatar that was some reflection of yourself that could be accessed by anyone in your network at any time.

For someone socially detached such as myself, these expectations are a nightmare.

This book takes the nightmare to its logical and awful conclusion.

How much privacy and identity will be lost as social media and Ultra powerful corporations - Google, Apple - control or have access to every data point on you and every aspect of your personality? Could we cease being individuals altogether and simply blend into a collective community?

In this book, Eggers guessed at just how much will be lost and lead me down an engaging tunnel of madness on the way there. I was actually afraid to read Book III, and had to take a deep breath before I did, a rare emotional reaction for me.

This is a great, scary book. I'm not going to go live in the woods, but I will at least continue to be cognizant of the changes that new media and communication enact on my existence.

What drives human beings to commit the acts they do? What is the basis for the striking and irrational outbursts of the downtrodden?

“Hunger” explores the randomness of human behavior and speculates what effect despair can have on this behavior.

Our hero is a downtrodden writer who is intelligent but irrational. He is often homeless and starving. This unnamed (except when he gives fake names to the police) protagonist is unwilling or unable to use the scraps of money he earns to better his station in life.

The novel is spent inside the protagonist's mind, bouncing from lucid moment to raving moment. The reader is shown the rational and irrational reactions this man has to his environment and his situation.

I'm not sure if the thoughts and actions of this man of “Hunger” are relevant or accurate in regards to the homeless of today, but they did cause me to reflect on the results that despair and homelessness may affect. The writing is intense and I couldn't help become captivated by what thoughts and actions the protagonist would cook up. I wanted him to succeed, but the tone of the novel made it clear from page one that mere survival was the best to hope for.

Gladwell simultaneously argues that Bill Gates is successful due mostly to luck and that it's a good thing a Latina girl from the Bronx pulls 15 hour school days to battle economic inequality.

Some interesting arguments here but overall all I can really get from this thing is that life is fucked, luck is the number one ingredient for success, and the number two ingredient is an inhuman amount of work.

Descartes goes about trying to decide, if all beliefs are eliminated, what indisputable truths remain? He goes very quickly from “I can't be sure I'm not just a brain in a vat” to “God definitely exists”. It's a fascinating and immensely flawed exercise. He references simple mathematics a bit (of course) and it seemed to me that his exploration was not dissimilar from Euclid's Elements but in the Euclid, he starts with assuming there are five axioms. If you change those axioms, you end up with an entirely different geometry. In this case, Descartes belief in God feels more like an axiom than a derived truth. So his declaration of rational truths could be said to be Descartian God truth, with the existence of a deity as an axiom and ostensibly a different set of truths could easily be derived by assuming the non-existence of God. It was a fun short read but by the end it became a slight slog since the “reality” that was being discussed did not feel convincing.

Well, that concludes a nine, 500 page book series. Around book 4, I knew I'd keep following these characters no matter what. I'd say they really stuck the landing here.

The series managed to be impressively consistent while taking creative risks. Tying most of the loose ends together after crafting such a sprawling story is pretty darn impressive from my perspective.

The Expanse books are mostly about how humans continue to be human no matter what situations they find themselves in. There is an almost folksy quality to the writing that I appreciate.

I feel well-rewarded for my time investment in this series and have developed a genuine emotional attachment to the four principal characters. Farewell Rocinante.

It's the fourth in this big fat Turkey leg of a fantasy series. I'll keep listening to em (40 hours gets my money's worth from that there Audible)

Cool stuff in the Wheel of Time:

- The way magic works (sort of dangerously pull from the essence of the Earth)
- varied cultures
- hangout-style pacing
- main characters are compelling
- the character Perrin

Bad Stuff in the Wheel of Time:

- prudish
- villains feels a big mustache-whirly and “disposable-henchmany”
- the female characters are very much written by a man. it's not always awful but it's not not always awful

80% action 20% sci-fi.

Oscillates in tone between goofy and grim in a way enjoyed.

It's quite violent. I wanted to learn more about the Idirans and the Culture and was a bit disappointed by how much of this novel is just adventure as opposed to sci-fi but I'm intrigued enough to investigate other titles in the series.