Reading Notes: April–June 2021
A quarterly roundup of technical and general-interest books, with a few notable re-reads mixed in.
Technical Books
“Let’s Go Further!” by Alex Edwards — A follow-up to the author’s earlier “Let’s Go!” book, this volume covers more advanced Go topics, centering on building a REST API. It walks through extensive database interaction, schema migrations, email sending, metrics, user sign-up and authentication, and even a full deployment tutorial to a VM behind a reverse proxy. The writing is clear and the code is clean, making it easy to follow along while developing and testing locally. Some stylistic quirks from the earlier book persist, including a tendency to pull in third-party packages for fairly small pieces of functionality, but overall this is a very solid, practical guide.
“PostgreSQL Up & Running” by Regina Obe and Leo Hsu — This one fell short of expectations. It offers only a shallow overview of many features, with incomplete code samples and no exercises or extended examples. If you’re looking for something to supplement reading the official documentation, this may not do it. It’s unclear why one would reach for this over the excellent PostgreSQL docs, though it could still serve as a quick reference down the line.
Non-Fiction and History
“Gandhi before India” by Ramachandra Guha — The first part of a detailed Gandhi biography, focusing on his early life and his time leading South African Indians in their struggle for better treatment from the government. The book is thorough and offers a strong foundation for Gandhi’s later, more historically significant years. The most interesting sections cover his initial experiments with nonviolent protest during the South Africa years, well before he became famous for it in India. Gandhi comes across as unusual in many ways, from his treatment of family to his attitudes about food.
“Charlie Wilson’s War” by George Crile — A gripping account of American involvement in funding Afghan fighters against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. The narrative centers on Texas congressman Charles Wilson and CIA agent Gust Avrakatos, who drove the operation. The book offers a fascinating look at a key late-20th-century conflict and the inner workings of the CIA. The final third gets bogged down in detailed descriptions of internal agency politics, but overall this is excellent — and better than the movie it inspired.
“Eyes on the Prize” by Juan Williams — A history of the American civil rights years, 1954–1965, covering the major marches, sit-ins, court decisions, legislation, and federal-versus-state showdowns. The writing is strong, though the book feels a bit scattered as a standalone, since it was written to accompany a PBS series of the same name. Still, it reads well on its own.
“The Invention of Nature” by Andrea Wulf — A biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian polymath whose travels and writing inspired a whole generation of scientists and authors. Humboldt’s epic South American journey influenced Darwin, Thoreau, John Muir, and many others who are better known today in the English-speaking world. Beautifully written and a real pleasure to read.
“Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich — The author goes undercover as a minimum-wage worker across several states to see how people survive on such salaries. It’s an interesting and important book, though the shaky methodology and preachy tone can grate.
“One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories” — A collection of short fiction mostly from Africa, dealing with family, relationships, and hardship. Enjoyable throughout, and a good example of why hand-picked anthologies work well.
Science and Medicine
“Never Home Alone” by Rob Dunn — A fascinating look at the living creatures that share our homes and bodies, from insects to bacteria and fungi. Dunn describes experiments by his research group and collaborators, and gives a captivating account of what biologists and applied ecologists actually do.
“Rebel Cell” by Kat Arney — A deep dive into cancer as an outcome of evolution and multicellularity. It goes deeper than most popular science books into cancer biology and latest treatment research. It’s not a light read and takes a somewhat pessimistic view, especially regarding late-stage metastatic cancer. The sections criticizing big pharma for “profit making” feel populist and annoying, especially right after the author describes the meticulous, expensive, failure-prone work that goes into developing treatments.
Personal Finance and Self-Help
“The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel — A quick tour of personal finance advice along the lines popular in tech circles lately: be frugal, take risks carefully, and invest long-term in index funds. It’s nicely written but offers little that’s new to anyone who has read other books on the subject. It’s short, so not a bad use of time overall.
“Toxic Parents” by Susan Forward — Most parenting books tell you what to do; this one takes the opposite approach. While the behaviors it describes are extreme, it provides an interesting framework for thinking about the long-lasting damage parents can inflict. Useful as a lens on what not to do.
“The Secrets of Consulting” by Gerald M. Weinberg — This book didn’t live up to expectations. There are some useful insights, but they’re buried under layers of general truisms and quippy life advice. It might deserve a more targeted second review for specific scenarios, but it’s not an essential read.
Fiction and Re-Reads
“The Lost World” by Arthur Conan Doyle — A nostalgic re-read of an old-style adventure tale in the author’s unmistakably dramatic style. As a kid it never occurred to me, but scientifically this book is completely off — it mixes animals that could never have coexisted. For a book written in 1912, well before carbon dating, it’s hard to fault the author.
Re-reads — Several worthwhile returns: “The Wild Trees” by Richard Preston, “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Matthew Desmond, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea” by Barbara Demick, and a young-adult adaptation of Simon Singh’s “The Code Book” (having read the full original previously).
