This page is work-in-progress until the year 2024 ends.

General books

The Elements of Style, W. Strunk and E.B. White (Jan 1 – Jan 2)
A precious little book that was recommended in S.King memoir, On Writing, which I read last year. I did not expect it to be in textbook form, but it is, and it makes sense.
I can see why this is incredibly helpful to anybody writing anything. I can also see, in fact I have seen many of the rules and principles neglected in a lot of manuscripts.
This is basically a short book listing a collection of rules that would be fantastic to know by heart; I think they come naturally to mind with practice.

Billy Summers, S. King (Jan 2 – Jan 9)
This was a page-turner. I don’t fully agree, however, with the headlines saying “storytelling genius”. A good story it was, sure, but I have read better ones. And was expecting a better on from S.K.
I am still not sure if I like the story within the story. I understand that it folds on itself nicely at the end, but…was it really necessary? The main story could have been great in half of the pages.
I am also unsure if I like the sudden appearance of Alice in the main story. When I got to that point, I thought, OK, just because this is S.K. I’ll see where he wants to take me.
In the end, a question: is this book about writing too?

Calypso, D. Sedaris (Jan 11 – Jan 13)
This is a collection of essays. It also is my first Sedaris book. His style – in this book at least – is intriguing: fast-paced, with sudden switches from a subject to a loosely related one.
The second, familial essay resonates with me.
The more I read the better I enjoyed the style.
In the end, I can only praise it. I enjoyed it throughout. It’s about observations. It’s about family, what family does, and what people do strangely that everybody does as well.

Funny Girl, N. Hornby (Jan 15 – Jan 20)
The beginning is much slower than I expected, but by page 40 the gloves are off. The author employs a peculiar technique to switch from paragraph to paragraph. In one, he tells the story as if leaving out some details, which makes the paragraph look incomplete. The next paragraph starts as if it was unrelated, but then it elaborates on the previous one, explaining the missing bits.
I enjoyed it throughout. The author may have dragged the story on a bit too long, but it was a good story. Reading it went by quickly.
This book’s online reviews are mixed. Very popular in the mainstream, it has, however, less-than-great reviews on Goodreads. Hornby is a master at transmitting characters’ personalities and feelings by making them say and do things, without further explanation, just like in real life. It’s not what people say, think, or say to think; it’s what they do that matters. In this regard, this is a wonderful book. You need to be that kind of reader, though. The kind that pictures characters in his mind, not from a description of them, but purely from what they do.

A time for mercy, J. Grisham (Jan 22 – Jan 28)
This was my first Grisham’s book, and it brought me back to my teenage years, when I used to read a lot of fiction. I remember warming up to a book, as a new story that takes some time to fall in love with, and then, all of a sudden, I found myself incapable of stopping to read the last 200 pages in a hurry. I couldn’t wait to see how the story unfolded. That’s what happened with this book. In the beginning, the warm up felt slow. Some of the details felt a bit forced, unnatural. Then, without realizing it, I surprised myself, unable to put the book stop and turn the pages. A great story.

Me talk pretty one day, D. Sedaris (Jan 30 – Feb 3)
After reading, and loving Calypso, I could not but try another book by the same author. This one is older. I am struck, at first, by how much slower the reading feels compared to Calypso. In the first two essays the pace is not nearly as fast.
Well, it definitely picked the pace up. I may be on a Sedaris binge. Its writing is so funny, and so real, and so honest.

The saboteurs, C. Cussler and J. Du Brul (Feb 4 - Feb 11)
Vintage Cussler. He’s an author I used to read a lot in my teen years, so this one was a bit of a dive in the past for me. The story is exactly as I expected, and remembered, and didn’t disappoint.

The midnight library, M. Haig (Feb 12 - Feb 19)
No. No, no. Definitely not good. This is the kind of book that slows me down when I am on a book binge. I reckon I may miss something here, since it’s got good reviews, but the reader is always right, isn’t he?
First of all, the dialogues seem forced and unnatural. The main character’s depression isn’t well portrayed. The whole story feels forced, though I can live with that since it’s fiction.
The worst of all may be the prose itself. Sentences are written with the old and sad trick to make them very short, as if to keep the flow going. The result is that it seems to be written for people with an attention span of five seconds.
All of this is unfortunate, because the subject of unlimited lives and regrets could have been dealt with way better.

Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim, D. Sedaris (Feb 21 - Feb 25)
Thank you, David, for bringing me back to my reading binge after the unfortunate choice made with the previous book. Sedaris is a safe choice. My third book of his own, this year, and I doubt it will be the last one.

Never, K. Follett (Feb 26 - Mar 5)
A very good story. It evolves at first slowly, around ten or so main characters whose stories are captivating. I noticed that I went past the first 500 pages (out of 750) readily, simply because I enjoyed the characters’ stories, even though nothing exceptional was happening in the central plot. In fact, it was at times challenging to tell what the central plot was, but this didn’t make it less enjoyable.
When the core of the story finally sped up, I also started guessing where it may end. And it did end where I foresaw then, which is in a place that I would have never expected when I began the book. This was my first Follett’s book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

October 1964, D. Halberstam (Mar 8 - Mar 23)
A tough book to read, and a challenging one to get to the end of. However, if you are a baseball fan, it’s going to be one of the best on your bookshelf.
For me, it was up and down fun. I immensely enjoyed some parts, and I enjoyed others less. The last four chapters are among the former, and I could not stop turning pages.

Writers’ Guide, S. Gerth (5-book series) (Mar 24 - Apr 1)
I like books about the craft, usually, but this series was a disappointment. A few things saved, some good examples - positive or negative - and the rest is…sort of…blank space?

• Book 1: This book made me think buying it was a mistake. It’s the classic self-help book, full of “you"s, and very little actual content. I was hoping for content. I don’t hate self-help books, but I have had my shares of them, and am bored by them. Terrible, terrible chapter 15. It can be summarized in one sentence: “you can do this, but you also can not do it”. At least, the references seem OK.
• Book 2: Another terrible self-help book. It’s even worse than the first, because a lot of content is just copied from it! When I read “eat healthy” and “get enough rest”, then I knew I had had enough.
• Book 3: Finally some good content. The chapters on POV are good. Overall book #3 is okay.
• Book 4: This was a decent book. There’s still too much of “you, you, you”, but the examples are useful, and the content is too
• Book 5: Less good than books #3 and #4, but way better than #1 and #2. It’s a quick read, and that saves it.

Autopsy, P. Cornwell (Apr 2 - Apr 8)
This was my first Cornwell’s book. I enjoyed the beginning as, even if unfamiliar with characters that her readers already know, I can easily keep everything that’s said and done in my head. In other words, she doesn’t overdo it.
The story is nice - just nice. Characters are really good though.
I was disappointed at how it ended. I wish there was some more drama in the story.
PS: The pages on AI are total dummies.

Criss Cross, J. Patterson (Apr 14 - Apr 17)
This book is almost four hundred pages, and I have read it in three days. That’s way above my daily average. I just couldn’t stop and wanted to know who the heck M was. Or is?
It took me the first hundred pages or so to get used to Patterson’s writing. It was my first book of his. There’s a lot of telling, much more than I expected, as opposed to showing, and more adverbs than I wanted to see. The plot, however, is like a train that speeds up soon and cannot be stopped there since.

Novelist as a vocation, H. Murakami (Apr 23 - Apr 27)
A little memoir that was easy to devour. Murakami is true to his style more than ever. I love the beginning: “Writers are not that smart a people”!
I find it funny that the only two books of his that I read are both memoirs, and not any of his novels.

Technical books

Beautiful code, A. Oram and S. Wilson (Dec 21 – unfinished)
Fantastic first chapter. Second chapter not so much. The example is nice and nicely presented, but not in a good pedagogical way. Too big of a code chunk, and therefore details don’t emerge naturally. A terrible ninth chapter. Chaotic and poorly organized. It looks like a bunch of code copied and pasted from somewhere else, without a clear thread. Surely I missed it. Thankfully chapter 10 was brilliant. Chapter 11 is a beautiful story of a self-serving startup. I decided, after all, to not continue this book. This is my second attempt at reading something that shows and discusses software projects that stand out and, in some cases, made history, and it’s another disappointment. I believe this kind of content should be presented in a totally different way. I think that it may be better if an external observer describes the projects, because it seems only very few of the original authors are actually good at explaining their thought process and reasoning – and that’s all it should be. For sure, an external observer would need a long time to familiarize with software projects enough to be able to write such a book.
I will continue searching.

Introductory statistics with randomization and simulation, D. Diezet al. (Jan 13 – Jan 29)
This is a “companion” of Open Statistics, a book by some of the same authors that I read back in 2021. It deals with basic concepts and was, therefore, a good refresher for me. It did not add anything new. I would recommend it, but then I’d recommend Open Statistics more.

Essays and short stories

Out of Ohio, I. Franzier (Jan 10)
I loved both parts: the first, shy and nostalgic; the second, funny and brave.

Dead Man Laughing, Z. Smith (Jan 21)
Not really what I expected. An enjoyable essay; in part nostalgic, in part funny, in part sad. In the end, though, none of those.

How to become a writer, L. Moore (Apr 16)
Funny!

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