Books, Commentary, Ephemera, & More
Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, & technology book reviews. Also social, political, & economic commentary. Plus more.
Go in Practice Matt Butcher and Matt Farina Manning, paperback Considerable planning, effort and care have gone into writing Go in Practice, a new Golang programming book from Manning and also available from Amazon. The book’s structure and approach are both geared toward helping Go newbies move beyond the basics. The writing is clear, and the … Continue reading Get Better with Golang: ‘Go in Practice’
Introducing Data Science Davy Cielen, Arno D. B. Meysman, and Mohamed Ali Manning – paperback The three authors of this book note that “[d]ata science is a very wide field, so wide indeed that a book ten times the size of this one wouldn’t be able to cover it all. For each chapter, we picked … Continue reading ‘Introducing Data Science’ – A good doorway into the world of processing, analyzing & displaying Big Data – #bookreview
Spear of Light The Glittering Edge, Book Two Brenda Cooper Pyr – Kindle, paperback Spear of Light is the second book in The Glittering Edge duology. And it has been my introduction to Brenda Cooper’s science-fiction writing. For the most part, I am impressed. While I missed Edge of Dark, the duology’s first book, I … Continue reading ‘Spear of Light’ – Human vs. post-human on a planet facing destruction – #scifi #bookreview
A Brilliant Death Robin Yocum Seventh Street Books – paperback, Kindle Writers often are advised to “Write what you know.” Author Robin Yocum clearly has heeded that advice. This is a well-written mystery that also is a coming-of-age story, plus a fine portrait of simpler times in the American heartland during the mid-1960s. A Brilliant … Continue reading ‘A Brilliant Death’ – Murder mystery, coming of age and homage to 1960s small-town Ohio – #bookreview
Spring in Action Craig Walls Manning – paperback If you have worked with the decade-old Spring framework, you know well that it has a long history of providing configuration headaches for developers. The new Spring Boot framework, on the other hand, literally brings much-needed simplification and automation to the process of using Spring. And it … Continue reading ‘Spring Boot in Action’ can help you push aside the old drudgeries of configuring Spring applications – #programming #bookreview
Clojure in Action, 2nd Edition Amit Rathore and Francis Avila Manning – paperback Clojure seems to be afflicted with a measles-like outbreak of parentheses, and it generally just looks strange to many software developers. And there’s a good reason for that, as this book’s two author point out in their recently released second edition. “Clojure’s … Continue reading Attack of the Killer Parentheses: ‘Clojure in Action, 2nd Edition’ – #bookreview
The Make: Series of How-to Books A British scientist made headlines a few years ago when she warned that young people no longer make or repair things. It has become all too easy for them now, she cautioned, to simply throw away old or broken devices and buy new ones. A key point was that … Continue reading Step away from the ‘smartphone’ and try using your hands and mind to make something – #bookreview
Go in Action William Kennedy, with Brian Ketelsen and Erik St. Martin Manning – paperback The authors of Go in Action assume that you are a working developer who is proficient with some other language, such as Java, Ruby, Python, C# or C++. However, their book is written well, has good illustrations and offers small … Continue reading Go in Action – A comprehensive overview, from ‘Hello, Go’ to ‘Testing & Benchmarking’ – #programming #bookreview
Meteor in Action Stephan Hochhaus and Manuel Schoebel Manning – paperback I have worked with several JavaScript frameworks, and Meteor has become a favorite, mainly because it is closely related to the MEAN stack family and plays well with MongoDB and Node.js. As the Meteor in Action authors note: “Meteor runs on top of … Continue reading ‘Meteor in Action’: A good how-to guide for learning a popular JavaScript framework – #programming #bookreview
The Survivors A Cal Henderson Novel Robert Palmer Seventh Street Books – paperback, Kindle What a swamp a single lie can lead to. Washington, D.C., psychologist Cal Henderson thinks this to himself while he is trying, years later, to sort out the real reasons behind why his two young brothers and father were … Continue reading The Survivors: A complex mystery unfolds in this good series-debut novel – #fiction #bookreview