Aces Abroad by George R.R. MartinMy rating: 3 of 5 stars Up until now, we’ve been very America-centric with the Wild Cards series. In fact, except for the first book, it sometimes seemed as if there were only cases in New York City. With this book, things are expanded out. Sometimes it’s because some of…

Koreatown: A Cookbook by Deuki HongMy rating: 3 of 5 stars Let me start with the good:– The photography in this book is beautiful– The interviews with various celebrities and chefs are great– The narrative style of the recipe intros work well– the section on the the Korean pantry is important and well-written The neutral:–…

Head First Go by Jay McGavrenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I will admit that I just skimmed over the web server part. I barely write web backend stuff in Python, I’m not about to do it in Go any time soon. My main goal with this book was to finally learn Go after having…

The Poppy War by R.F. KuangMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I recieved this book as part of the Hugo 2021 nominations packet This book was GREAT! I can definitely see why its series was up for a Hugo nom this year. I wasn’t able to get past the first book before it was time…

Men at Arms by Terry PratchettMy rating: 4 of 5 stars This is my second time reading this book. I left the rating the same When it comes to the Anhk-Morpork based books, Pratchett lays in the final brick in the foundation for all that will come. The Night Watch is elevated to full Watch.…

Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! by Miran Lipova?aMy rating: 3 of 5 stars Learn You a Haskell (or LYAH as it’s known on Stack Exchange and other parts of the internet) is the most often recommended resource for learning Haskell. I think it has a lot of things going for it. 1. It’s…

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons My rating: 4 of 5 stars I received this book for free as part of the 2021 Hugo Voting Packet This was a great, fun book. The only point I really had against it is that eventually with all the fantasy names and locations and history, things eventually…

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is the story of the beginning of computers, written in the 1980s. I’d already read about many of the events portrayed in the book via other books or magazine articles. But this was nice and detailed. I like…

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi My rating: 3 of 5 stars I got this book for free twice: Tor.com ebook club and Hugo Award nomination This book was very, very hard to read. It ripped open so many of the psychological wounds from the past decade in which I finally, truly understood the injustice of…

Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis My rating: 3 of 5 stars I received this book for free as part of 2021 Hugo voting process. Also, a reminder that I use the Goodreads tooltips for ratings – 3/5 means “liked it” – it’s not a bad rating. Let’s use the whole scale, guys! I have been…

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is my second time reading Lords and Ladies Throughout this re-read I have asked a question in my reviews: Is this a good jumping on point for The Discworld. I have tried to give justifications for an answer in either direction. This…

The Last Emperox by John Scalzi My rating: 4 of 5 stars Well, that was quite the trilogy! Scalzi took all that he had been building up over the three books and used them to create a satisfying ending. If this isn’t your first Scalzi series you won’t be surprised by the ending. Don’t get…

Django 2 by Example: Build powerful and reliable Python web applications from scratch by Antonio Melé My rating: 3 of 5 stars If you want to learn Django, definitely get the newer version of this book that covers Django 3. That said, this book was VERY helpful in getting me started with Django for the…

Network Effect by Martha Wells My rating: 5 of 5 stars I got this book for free by being a World Con member for the 2021 convention. It’s part of the review packet.So, that was really flippin’ good. I wasn’t sure how well Martha Wells would do at transitioning from novella length Murderbot to full-length…

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is my second time reading this book. I dropped the rating from 5/5 to 4/5. As usual, Terry Pratchett uses the fantasy of Discworld to shed light on reality. This book is less whimsical than other Discworld book although it does have its…