Reading Notes: A Quarter of History, Science, and Fiction

This quarter's reading spanned from the U.S. Constitution and the history of shipping containers to radiation science and a collection of short stories. Below are my notes on the books that filled the last few months.

Non-Fiction: History and Science

Several books offered deep dives into historical and scientific topics. "America's Constitution: A Biography" by Akhil Reed Amar is a dense, academic-level discussion focused on the historical background of each clause and amendment. It is far more suited for syntopical reading than casual enjoyment. In contrast, "The Box" by Marc Levinson provides a detailed and engaging account of how the shipping container revolutionized global transportation and economics, making the world feel smaller.

For a scientific perspective, "Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation" by Timothy J. Jorgensen offers a solid overview of radioactivity's discovery and its health implications, while doing well to dispel common myths. "The Pluto Files" by Neil deGrasse Tyson, however, is a shorter read that focuses more on the drama surrounding the planet's reclassification than on deep scientific discussion.

Two books proved more challenging. "Database Internals" by Alex Petrov covers storage algorithms, including B-trees, in its first half, which is the more compelling section. The second half, on distributed algorithms like consensus, reads more like a literature overview with insufficient depth for each topic. Similarly, "The Great Influenza" by John M. Barry was a disappointment. Despite being a decent history of the 1918 epidemic, it spends too much time on tangential biographies of researchers and lengthy lists of fatalities by city and country, lacking the focused scientific background I had hoped for.

Fiction and Biographies

On the literary side, Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha" offers a beautifully simple and flowing narrative of self-discovery in ancient India, though it feels like a book that rewards a second reading for full appreciation. Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth" is another fine collection of stories about Bengali immigrants in the northeastern U.S., though I still prefer her earlier Interpreter of Maladies.

The standout is Robert A. Caro's "The Path to Power", the first volume of his epic biography of Lyndon B. Johnson. Despite being nearly 1,000 dense pages, the masterful writing provides an incredible backdrop to mid-20th-century American politics and life in Texas. It is not an easy read, even with audio, but Caro's award-winning craft makes it a rewarding journey.

Re-reads

This period also included revisiting several favorites, such as John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, William Kamkwamba's The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, and Arlie Russell Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land. Technically a re-read, Marijn Haverbeke's Eloquent JavaScript was actually the 3rd edition, which is about twice as long as the 1st edition I read in 2013 and covers modern ES6. It's a comprehensive book with numerous exercises and solutions but not intended for beginners.