A Quarter of Technical Reads and a Few Detours
Eli Bendersky's reading list for the first quarter of 2022 blends hands-on engineering books with a generous helping of history, science, and fiction. Several picks stand out for their technical depth, offering both praise and pointed criticism for developers looking to expand their libraries.
Go and Systems Programming: High Ambition, Mixed Execution
"Distributed Services with Go" by Travis Jeffery aims to cover an immense amount of ground: building a real-world distributed service with gRPC, TLS security, service discovery, consensus, load balancing, and Kubernetes deployment. The author notes the code is very practical, making it a valuable addition to Go distributed systems literature. However, the execution has notable flaws. The volume leans heavily on many dependencies, some quite obscure, and the code quality is inconsistent. The author points out a strange mix of micro-optimizations (debating uint32 vs. uint64 for memory savings) alongside unused fields and asymptotically slow algorithms. The biggest hurdle for readers is the sheer size of the code dumps, which lack sufficient discussion of design plans before diving in. The reviewer believes these issues are fixable in a future edition, which could turn the book into a true gem.
In the Rust space, "Rust in Action" by Tim McNamara takes an intermediate-level approach with several non-trivial systems programming projects. It is a refreshing choice for its focus on code that does something real, but it is not recommended as a first Rust book. The primary issue is that the book is still unpolished, riddled with typos and mismatches between code listings and the accompanying repository. A general observation is made that Rust developers, even in a low-level systems book, are quick to reach for external crates, which the reviewer argues may not be the ideal strategy when the goal is teaching bottom-up systems understanding.
One clear miss was "Introducing JavaScript Game Development" by Graeme Stuart. The review is blunt, calling it little more than an extended blog post with pasted, average code that lacks idiomatic style and documentation. It is deemed a waste of time and money, with the reviewer recommending the latest edition of "Eloquent JavaScript" instead, which teaches modern idioms and includes a superior canvas-based game chapter.
Science, History, and Big Ideas
On the science front, "Burn" by Herman Pontzer offers a compelling look at nutrition and metabolism, primarily through the lens of the author's anthropological research with the Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. The book builds on the work of writers like Gary Taubes, adding more nuanced scientific detail, and is praised as a very good read for those interested in human evolution and how we process energy.
"Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind" by Peter Godfrey-Smith mixes natural history with philosophy. The reviewer preferred the historical aspects, which explore where cognition arose in the tree of life. The philosophical sections, which attempt to define "kind of cognition," were found to be more speculative and less coherent, though the book is not considered a bad one overall.
"Annals of the Former World" is John McPhee's epic geologic tour of the United States, which some call "geo-poetry." While the prose is occasionally beautiful, the reviewer found the sheer volume of un-introduced geologic terms and the lack of organization frustrating. The book would likely be far more enjoyable for readers who have already completed an introductory geology course.
Memoirs, Biographies, and Fiction
Barack Obama's "A Promised Land" proved to be a substantial surprise. The first volume of his memoirs, covering his time as a senator and the first two years of his presidency, offers a thorough and balanced look at the challenges of the office and the decision-making process. The audio version, narrated by the author, adds a personal touch, covering executive-legislative relations and internal White House workings in an insightful way.
The combined biography of MLK and Malcolm X, "The Sword and the Shield" by Peniel E. Joseph, attempts to show their approaches converging later in life. The reviewer, however, found it a bit heavy-going and perhaps too academic.
Fiction picks included the immersive audiobook production of "Dune", which is praised for its rich world-building despite its oddities. Walter Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin is noted as a good, comprehensive read. "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett addresses important topics about identity and family, though its non-linear plot was deemed somewhat confusing in execution. Finally, Michael Crichton's "Rising Sun" serves as a period-piece detective story, interesting mainly as a time capsule of early 90s "Japan panic," reminding readers how hard it is to predict economic futures.
The re-reads list for the quarter included Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Charles Wheelan's Naked Money, Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
