Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
3/5
Very much a vehicle for Palahniuk to rant about this and that through the voice of a 13 year old girl condemned to hell, supposedly for overdosing on pot. Entertaining, but felt that the plot served the ranting rather than the other way round.
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REST API Design Rulebook by Mark Masse
2/5
Two huge problems with this book. It's short and very repetitive so the information content is about a couple of blog posts. The 'rules' are highly subjective, and much of the book is pushing the author's WRML 'standard' which I've never seen in the wild. The only real positive is that it's a comprehensive survey of the issues you need to think about when designing a REST API: just don't take the rules as gospel and research best practice from major APIs so you understand the context.
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Reamde by Neal Stephenson
5/5
Intelligent and humorous if highly contrived thriller set loosely around an MMORPG. Loved it.
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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
4/5
It's a homage to the 80s and early computer games set in the ultimate MMORPG of the future. What's not to love?
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Neutrino by Frank Close
3/5
Narrow topic, but an interesting book, especially the frustratingly long effort to reconcile observed electron neutrinos from the Sun with reality. Has a rather repetitive recap at the end that ends up recapping some of the recap which rather bogged things down. I definitely know more about neutrinos than I did before though.
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RESTful .NET by Jon Flanders
4/5
Great coverage of exposing and consuming a RESTful service using WCF. Note that you'll need the services of a good WCF book, this builds on existing WCF expertise and doesn't try that hard to bring you up to speed. Which isn't a bad thing, it keeps the book relatively short and focused. I'll be referring back to this one often.
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The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
4/5
Jon Ronson just has an incredible knack of getting crazy people to talk to him. In The Psychopath Test he mixes with Scientologists, CEOs, psychopaths and psychopath hunters. The book is both funny and very disturbing. There's the theory that a significant proportion of CEOs and politicians are successful because they are psychopaths. There's the somewhat arbitrary checklist that is used to diagnose a psychopath and the impossible situation of trying to prove that you're sane once you've been committed. And there's the profit seeking alliance between drug companies and psychologists that Ronson claims has led to over *three million* children being diagnosed as bipolar in the US when quite possibly none of them are.
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Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach
5/5
A new must have parenting book. The giant pangolins of Madagascar are inspired, move over Eric Carle. The only problem with the book is that as soon as Kate can read I'm going to have to permanently worry about where this is hidden...
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Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
3/5
The first couple of chapters are hilarious and then it's a solid, sprawling family drama with enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. I just couldn't click with any of the characters and ultimately didn't care how things turned out for any of them.
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Zero Day by Mark Russinovich
2/5
Promising start, Mark 'system internals' Russinovich certainly knows his stuff and the initial computer forensics are bang on. Sadly it descends into a pedestrian chase thriller and the malware takes a back seat to cookie cutter Arab terrorists.
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