What I Read in January 26
A note on my reading patterns and these reviews
Some months I read quite a bit, others I don’t read at all. So these reviews will be inconsistent. Additionally, reading a book is quite a significant investment in time, therefore I am a fan of giving up on some books. With that in mind, I won’t be including any books that I do not finish. So the reviews will all meet a certain personal or subjective baseline of interest on my part. The ones I do review will be categorized with the following broad ratings:
- Would recommend
- Recommend if the topic or genre interests you
- Would not recommend Lastly, calling these “reviews” is generous on my part. The idea is just to jot some quick notes down and give you an idea on what I’m reading.
January Reviews
Exiting the holiday life sped up again. This meant less time to read and I only finished one book. I started a few that I didn’t complete, but we won’t cover those here.
The Magic of Code
Rating: Would recommend
This was a holiday gift that I really enjoyed. The author, Samuel Arbesman, talked about his longtime love for code, but not in a gate-keepy way. He walks through how code is everywhere and connects so much of the world. This is what makes it so important to understand it and appreciate it. This book is also a contributor to what made me personally make a switch on what I see as the democratization of coding via AI tools. Before I almost felt like coding should be for serious engineers. Although there is no real logic behind that, just emotion. Why shouldn’t people feel empowered to build and appreciate the power of code. Making something come to life with code provides a dopamine hit and there is no reason to gate keep that.