ct smith

NON-FICTION: *Progressive Delivery: Build the Right Thing for the Right People at the Right Time *, James Governor, Kimberly Harrison, Heidi Waterhouse, and Adam Zimman
Won an audiobook copy in a giveaway on LinkedIn.

NON-FICTION: Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg
Time to gain bene gesserit witch-like communication powers, or something.

NON-FICTION: Knowledge Graphs and LLMs in Action, Alessandro Negro with Vlastimil Kus, Giuseppe Futia and Fabio Montagna
Learning about the intersection of knowledge graphs and LLMs - exactly where my interests in systems thinking, IA, and AI converge.

FICTION: Ambergris, Jeff VanderMeer
This is my on-the-ereader read, which I don't know how to explain. If you get it, you get it.

NON-FICTION: Trying to Give Ease: Tommie Bass and the Story of Herbal Medicine, John K. Crellin, Jane Philpott
Slow going cause this one needs a lot of attention. Half of the book is notes. Very well researched and it's an absolute treasure of a portrait of a treasured man.

NON-FICTION: Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari
Picked this up for Tom Johnson's Human in the Loop AI book club, but honestly the abstract reminded me of an Aesop Rock song I love, so I was compelled to read it anyway.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk - 5/5⭐
I really enjoyed this book. I love the Slavic wordiness. I was hooked from the first sentence. I have to return this copy to the library, but will be buying my own copy to read again and annotate.

Lost Souls Meet under a Full Moon, Mizuki Tsujimura - 3/5⭐
Entertaining but it's not really my sort of book. I did like how neatly everything was arranged, though, and there were a few moments that made me feel emotional. Only bought it because the nerdy gal who doesn't make eye contact suggested this while I was checking out at B&N and she's so visibly shy that it must have taken great courage for her to do that and I couldn't say no.

Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton - 5/5⭐
5/5 for page-turningness entertainment value alone. Binge-read in under 24 hours cause it was quite the page-turner! It's even more terrifying now, having worked in tech with various "visionaries" who may or may not remind me of John Hammond.

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver - 5/5⭐
POTENTIAL SPOILERS. Read like my own memoir, my own voice. I am afflicted. I've never felt so understood but also so many of those feelings I want to ball up and wrap my whole body around and keep them quiet cause there's no way to explain them to folks who ain't lived it. This is the best book I've ever read and it's one of the only things that's ever truly moved me. It wasn't just me. I ended up sob-laughing and reading the last page over and over again cause I can't believe my own good fortune.

Authority, Jeff VanderMeer - 2/5⭐
I found it boring but read it as a means to an end.

Acceptance, Jeff VanderMeer - 3/5⭐
I thought the ending was weak but then I learned he wrote an additional installment 10 years later so I might revise this.

DOCS AS TESTS, Manny Silva
I preordered it and binged it the day after it released. Great information that I'm still trying to figure out how to apply to my own docsets.

Payments Systems in the US,
Read it for work.

True to Form, Eric Goodman
Read it to rehab an old injury.

Shillelagh: The Irish Fighting Stick, John W. Hurley
Read it out of curiosity.