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l33tminion) wrote2024-07-07 09:36 pm
l33tminion) wrote2024-07-07 09:36 pm
Fun Around Boston and Some Island Reading
Two weeks ago, my parents were in town along with Melissa and Simon, and boy was I ever excited about Erica getting some time with her little cousin and Simon getting the chance to visit Boston. He's two-and-a-half so I don't expect he'll remember it per se, but he's old enough for the visit to make an impression. (And Simon has really learned so much, even just in the last few months. He's often quiet but surprisingly articulate when he wants to speak up, he seems to think carefully about what he wants to say.)
It was a good occasion to do some touristy things with the family. They arrived on Tuesday evening and we had a nice dinner out at Josephine. On Wednesday, we went to the aquarium, then took the ferry to Charlestown and saw the USS Constitution Museum. On Thursday, we went to the Institute for Contemporary Art and the Children's Museum, having ice cream pastry at Taiyaki NYC and stopping by Martin's Park before dinner. On Friday, we went to Petsi Pies for breakfast, then to the Franklin Park Zoo. Lots of great food and great times.
Then we all went to Sandy Island Camp for a week. The trip up went unusually quickly, and the week had pretty good weather (got caught out in the rain one evening, but the weather was good most days and the nights were generally not too hot). As usual, I read a lot of books:
Unsong by Scott Alexander - By the author of the extremely clever and insightful blogs Slate Star Codex and (its successor Substack) Astral Codex Ten, originally released as serial web fiction here (though the compiled book is a bit different on account of an editing pass and some mild rewrites). The protagonist, an aspiring Kabbalist (turned data-mining sweatshop worker after running afoul of intellectual property law) makes an unexpected discovery which sets off an apocalypse. If you like other absurdist speculative fiction by writers like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, this might be up your alley.
Flash Boys by Michael Lewis - Tells the story of IEX, a new (founded 2012) stock exchange that sought to thwart various forms of front running done by high-frequency traders. Pretty interesting.
The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow - Second in a series of detective novels about a forensic accountant, told in reverse chronological order. I'm enjoying this series.
Indespensible by Gautam Mukunda - The author is an acquaintance, so I took a bit too long to finally get around to reading his book. The book presents some very interesting case studies of various stand-out leaders (for good or ill) and their more typical counterparts. The biographical case studies are pretty interesting, but the model of "filtered" versus "unfiltered" leaders that ties things together seemed less well-constructed. In part because it needs to generalize from very few examples, but in part because there seems to be some back-construction of whether a leader is "filtered" or "unfiltered" (the latter being either an outsider or an insider who was somehow rejected by the system); in the case of leaders who basically forged their insider credentials, the classification depends on whether the deception was uncovered.
Translation State by Anne Leckie - In the same setting as Ancillary Justice. If that trilogy was hard military science fiction (i.e. mostly politics and tea: SPACE politics and SPACE tea), this one is hard diplomatic science fiction in the same setting. Happy to have more of that.
The Pains by John Sundman - This novella is a bit of an AU 1984. Had some interesting bits, though I liked some of Sundman's other books more.
The Penelopead by Margaret Atwood - Atwood's take on Penelope's side of the events of The Odyssey, with the twelve hanged maids as a haunting Greek chorus. Told with Atwood's particular dark humor regarding a certain sort of historical / mythopoetic perspective.
It was a good occasion to do some touristy things with the family. They arrived on Tuesday evening and we had a nice dinner out at Josephine. On Wednesday, we went to the aquarium, then took the ferry to Charlestown and saw the USS Constitution Museum. On Thursday, we went to the Institute for Contemporary Art and the Children's Museum, having ice cream pastry at Taiyaki NYC and stopping by Martin's Park before dinner. On Friday, we went to Petsi Pies for breakfast, then to the Franklin Park Zoo. Lots of great food and great times.
Then we all went to Sandy Island Camp for a week. The trip up went unusually quickly, and the week had pretty good weather (got caught out in the rain one evening, but the weather was good most days and the nights were generally not too hot). As usual, I read a lot of books:
Unsong by Scott Alexander - By the author of the extremely clever and insightful blogs Slate Star Codex and (its successor Substack) Astral Codex Ten, originally released as serial web fiction here (though the compiled book is a bit different on account of an editing pass and some mild rewrites). The protagonist, an aspiring Kabbalist (turned data-mining sweatshop worker after running afoul of intellectual property law) makes an unexpected discovery which sets off an apocalypse. If you like other absurdist speculative fiction by writers like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, this might be up your alley.
Flash Boys by Michael Lewis - Tells the story of IEX, a new (founded 2012) stock exchange that sought to thwart various forms of front running done by high-frequency traders. Pretty interesting.
The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow - Second in a series of detective novels about a forensic accountant, told in reverse chronological order. I'm enjoying this series.
Indespensible by Gautam Mukunda - The author is an acquaintance, so I took a bit too long to finally get around to reading his book. The book presents some very interesting case studies of various stand-out leaders (for good or ill) and their more typical counterparts. The biographical case studies are pretty interesting, but the model of "filtered" versus "unfiltered" leaders that ties things together seemed less well-constructed. In part because it needs to generalize from very few examples, but in part because there seems to be some back-construction of whether a leader is "filtered" or "unfiltered" (the latter being either an outsider or an insider who was somehow rejected by the system); in the case of leaders who basically forged their insider credentials, the classification depends on whether the deception was uncovered.
Translation State by Anne Leckie - In the same setting as Ancillary Justice. If that trilogy was hard military science fiction (i.e. mostly politics and tea: SPACE politics and SPACE tea), this one is hard diplomatic science fiction in the same setting. Happy to have more of that.
The Pains by John Sundman - This novella is a bit of an AU 1984. Had some interesting bits, though I liked some of Sundman's other books more.
The Penelopead by Margaret Atwood - Atwood's take on Penelope's side of the events of The Odyssey, with the twelve hanged maids as a haunting Greek chorus. Told with Atwood's particular dark humor regarding a certain sort of historical / mythopoetic perspective.
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Also, I should definitely read some more Leckie.