Reading Off The Web

By now you have worked out that pure Sharepoint content is not the point of this blog, no matter how I try to keep it on-topic. But then, it was named for one of those things that happen out in the real world, a cross-pollination, as it were. This is more to do with what happens when a straight arts and lit person discovers they are pretty good at puzzles, uses this ability to strip the skin off the systems running the world for money, and is, accordingly, horrified at what lies beneath.*

*Disorganization and people, mostly.

In order to escape the horror that is realizing the people who made these systems are, for real, people, and the biases are now hard-coded, I have become a reader. Readers have book lists. Other people know they're readers, and ask for book lists. Some of mine are long enough to reveal my profound disappointment with reality as it stands; this is not one of those. This is my short list.  Most of these are pop culture or pop science. All of them have roots in quite recent research or benefit strongly from broader background reading, but stand well on their own.

All of these are affiliate-linked, of course. But you can probably find them in the TPL, and I recommend you do so.

1. vN, Madeline Ashby – Read this book! She’s local, it’s recent, it’s AMAZINGLY WELL DONE for a brutal story about all the weirdest bits of the internet. SO GOOD.
2. Burning Your Boats, Angela Carter  – the collected short stories: I’d been recommending The Bloody Chamber to all and sundry, and, truly, it deserves it – but this has all that and more.
3. Mauve, Simon Garfield – the history of organic chemistry through the development of artificial dye.
4. Stiff, Mary Roach – What happens to people when they are no longer people, per se.
5. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel – memoir is everywhere. This one is an excellent graphic novel.
6. Stolen, Annette LaPoint – not for everyone, but for most people; a novel of the praries and contemporary geekdom and theft and murder.
7. Gun Machine, Warren Ellis – Again, the violence may be too much, but I loved it.
8. The Information, James Gleick – A survey of the history of information as quantifiable product. I’m reading it for class, but why shouldn’t others benefit?
9. Zero History, William Gibson – the ending is a bit weak. I like his writing anyway. I want to live in that world.
10. Ready Player One, Ernst Cline – I was ambivalent to this but in the end re-read it twice. So I suppose, if we’re going to Other Worlds…