This is the fifth murderbot book and it’s a fun read just like the rest. Unfortunately, it’s also really short just like most of the others and I find that the story is therefore just a bit simple and two dimensional. It is nice that the story isn’t just a repeat of previous entries in…
Category: Book
Children of Memory
This is the third book in this series, coming after Children of Time and Children of Ruin. While I really liked the first of the books in the series, the second felt weaker. While this one doesn’t review as well as the second I think it’s actually a stronger book. Whilst sometimes a bit repetitive…
Taming Silicon Valley
The similarities and contrast between this book and AI Snake Oil are striking. For example, AI Snake Oil describes generative AI as something which largely works but is sometimes wrong, whereas this book is very concerned about how they’ve been rushed out the door in the wake of the unexpected popularity of ChatGPT despite clear…
Network Effect
I’m not really sure why, but I found it harder to get going on this book than the others in the series. It might have been that I was also reading a particularly good non-fiction book at the same time, or it might have been that the premise for these books is starting to wear…
AI Snake Oil
Nick recommended I read this book, so here it is. The book starts by providing an analogy for how we talk about AI — imagine that all transport vehicles were grouped by one generic term instead of a variety like “car”, “bus”, “rocket”, and “boat”. Imagine the confusion a conversation would experience if I was…
The Four Tendencies
I tend to be a bit concerned by psychology books from people without psychology qualifications, but Cat was keen for me to read this book based on her encounters of the author in podcast form. Luckily, Psychology Today seems to have relatively positive things to say about the book so I decided to give it a…
Leaders Eat Last
This is the first Simon Sinek book I’ve read. His stuff has been on my mental to do list for a long time, but never seemed to get to the top until now. This is about a book about how employee happiness and trust in their management directly results in better outcomes for employers, and…
Children Of Ruin
This book did not go where I expected it to. Sure, it has a species uplift plot which is similar to Children of Time, but that’s not all that’s happening here. If the previous book was about refugees and redemption, this book is about alternative ways of structuring societies (I don’t want to ruin the…
Solving the bottom turtle (the SPIFFE / SPIRE ebook)
I’m reading about SPIFFE / SPIRE at the moment in the form of the official project ebook. I’m going to list it here because if I read 194 pages I am going to write it up, regardless of if the book has been formally published or not. This book is probably the best introduction to…
Lights Out
This book continues the story of General Electric in the period after that covered by The Man Who Broke Capitalism, thus presenting an opportunity to validate if Jack Welch really was the bad guy while also learning more about where Welchism took General Electric in the longer term. This book is very readable, with nice…