Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Welcome back to the crapsack/grimdark world of America in the 2020s as created by Octavia Butler in the 1990s. It is sometimes eerily prophetic. More about that later.

The addition of Lauren’s daughter’s (Larkin) annotations to her mother’s journals provides a very interesting context to the stories. Similar to the chapter openings made up of Encyclopedia entries in Asimov’s original Foundation book, it helps to prove a premise that has been making the rounds on the internet for some five years now - that spoilers aren’t necessarily bad. When we read Larkin’s annotations, we understand something about the future. We know that Larken suvives to adulthood. We know that she resents her mother and Earthseed. We know that Earthseed as a movement lasts. But we still want to read on to learn the details of how we got there. It’s why people went to see Titanic in the 1990s even though they knew the boat was going to sink.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. I have dropped the rating from 5 to 3 stars

This book is all but divorced from all the other Discworld books. There’s at least one other one like this one - Small Gods. In that sense, it makes a sort of nice introduction to Discworld because it can be read on its own and one can understand Pratchett’s Discworld humor. There is some slight continuity - the idea of Ank-Morpok having crime guilds to regulate the amount of crime. Death, of course. But for the most part, it sits fine on its own.

Cook’s Illustrated 2019 by Dan Souza

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As usual, a great collection of the year’s issues. I’ve already made a couple recipes from this book and America’s Test Kitchen continues to excel.

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I didn’t do much coding in July, so I decided to combine the July and August wrap-ups.

Python

Dreamhost Dynamic DNS

I decided to clean up and update some code that uses the Dreamhost API to allow for Dynamic DNS. I cleaned up the logging output so that I could figure out why it was sometimes deleting one of my domains rather than just updating the IP. The original programmer had it printing out to the terminal. I used the logging package to send logs out to a file. While I was improving the logging, I also decided to use f-strings to make it more obvious what was going into the output string.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve had this book for about four years, ever since I got it in a Humble Bundle. I knew that I wanted to read Octavia Butler some day, but I hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Then NPR’s Throughline decided to do an episode about Octavia Butler and I wanted to read something before listening to the episode. So I asked the hosts via Twitter what book I should read. They recommended the two Earthseed books. I tore through this one, finishing it in just four days.

Third Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this book as part of the Storybundle.com Extraordinary Steampunk Bundle. I had no idea what to expect when I started reading it. Based on the cover, I figured it was basically a Steampunk novel taking place in India rather than England. That, alone seemed kind of interesting. As I read through the book, it quickly became apparent that this was actually taking place in an alternate Earth with an India-like culture spread across three countries. After just a few chapters, the book becomes a spy thriller and I found myself unable to put the book down. Many times, while reading, I would keep telling myself “just one more chapter.” While this trilogy seems to have been plotted as one large story, this book has a story that comes to a satisfying ending.

Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. The rating went up from 3 to 4 stars

This book revisits Granny Weatherwax, but while it keeps a lot of her personality traits, it seems to at least half-retcon the events of Equal Rites. The earlier book seemed to point to witches sticking strictly to headology while this one just has it as a preference. While Pratchett does keep Granny’s unreliable broom, she seems a lot more comfortable on it than she did in the previous book. Did she grow to like it or simply an outgrowth of ignoring the first few Discworld books?

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was quite a slow burn. (And I know some of the later books in this series are strongly disliked for keeping the story running in place) About a quarter of the way through the book I was certain this would be the end of my stroll through the Wheel of Time. But, gosh darn it!, Robert Jordan pulled it through at the end. The climax was pretty incredible and we learned some very interesting aspects of the in-world history. I thought the best part was the damane sul’man backstory which reminded me a lot of the backstory to The Handmaid’s Tale. There was definitely some schaudenfreude there.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, that was quite an excellent book! My 9-year-old read it and then wanted to share it with me, so she asked me to read it to her before bed. I must say, this book was a lot more sophisticated than I expected from the title and from the expected audience. It’s quite a mature take at the subject matter; T. Kingfisher definitely believes in the maxim of not talking down to her audience. There are themes of death, PTSD, fantasy racism, wrongful arrest by the state, war, and so much more. It really does prepare kids, mentally, to deal with the fact that the adults don’t have it all together. The key, of course, that it does so realistically. It’s not the cruel or ineffectual adults of British kids novels, these are adults doing their best and still failing; or acting under selfish motives.

The Official Scratchjr Book: Help Your Kids Learn to Code by Marina Umaschi Bers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of you may be familiar with Scratch if you’ve got kids about 15 or so years old or younger. It’s the hot language for the elementary and (in some places) middle school set to teach programming. It’s particularly great for the younger kids because programming takes place using blocks that slot into each other. This allows for the kids not to have to worry about spelling or curly braces or semicolons. You just plug blocks into each other and code. I scoffed at it at first until I saw the complex programs kids can create with Scratch. Scratch Jr is almost exactly the same thing, except it’s for younger kids and it’s a tablet program.