2016 Media Reviews

I’ve appreciated when people take the time to write reviews and highlight connections to other good works. This post will be regularly updated through 2016. Previously: 2014 2015

Starred items are highly recommended. Unlinked items should be avoided. “Dropped” items were left unfinished.

Books

The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci: Jonathan D. Spence; biography

Organized topically rather than chronologically, so I’m left wondering about basic events of his life and whether he felt like he accomplished anything. Also, everyone in the past was terrible.

Getting Past “No”: William Ury; sales

Nice advice for negotiation.

Library of Scott Alexandria: Scott Alexander; essays

Insightful food for thought on rationality, science, politics, and more.

Work The System: Sam Carpenter; self-help

“The E-Myth Revisited” reinvented by an unlikable blowhard.

* Haskell Programming from First Principles: Chris Allen, Julie Moronuki; programming

Far and away the best introduction to Haskell and the vital CS topics at work. Half my notes are “Huh, this reminds me of outside topics X and Y. *tinker* Ohhhh, that’s an interesting equivalence.” and that’s for a section introducing case statements. I maintain a repo of referenced resources.

The Vampire Chronicles: Anne Rice; fantasy

Cheesy thrillers about a narcissist become increasingly bizarre Christian fanfic.

80/20 Sales and Marketing: Perry Marshall; sales

Salesy take on pareto distribution.

Pitch Anything: Oren Klaff; sales

Smug and based on terrible pop science, but a decent framework.

The Secrets of Consulting: Gerald Weinberg; business

A rambly uncle tells fish stories about consulting.

Lost Souls, Drawing Blood: Poppy Z. Brite; horror

Revisiting an angsty pair of novels, and I have definitely aged out of the audience.

Significant Digits: Alexander D; fantasy

A fanfic off the HPMOR fanfic. OK, but the plot and resolution are based on a strange fan theory that’s never explained.

* Badass: Kathy Sierra, business

3rd read, still learning ways to do better.

Tap Dancing to Work: Carol Loomis; business

A collection of Forbes articles on Buffet. Decent intro, but way too friendly and familiar to feel substantive.

Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman; politics

Solid take on copyright law.

A Guide to the Good Life: William B. Irvine; philosophy

Excellent introduction to stoicism and its modern practice.

PACE: Jesse Mecham, business

A curiosity: an abandoned restatement of Mecham’s YNAB rules for business.

Echopraxia: Peter Watts; sci-fi

Unhappy loser gets dragged to space with assholes who also bring an attacker for no discernible reason, curse her sudden yet inevitable betrayal, wreck earth’s economy, then doom the planet. Relentlessly unhappy but, as with Watts’ other books, every chapter has more ideas than most novels.

* Deep Work: Cal Newport; self-help

How and why to do difficult work.

Are You My Mother: Alison Bechdel; memoir

Purportedly about her mom, but actually evenly split between her own therapy and the process of writing this memoir. An OK book, but it can’t compare to Fun Home.

Before Watchmen: Various; superhero

These authors didn’t understand anything about Watchmen.

* Age of Em: Robin Hanson, futurism

Guesses at what a future with digitized humans would look like. Incredibly dense, any given page would give enough setting to hang a decent sci-fi novel on. Skim the first couple chapters, they’re academic throat-clearing trying to preempt obvious criticism.

Letter to a CES Director: Jeremy Runnells; history

Short amateur survey of historical criticism of Mormonism, a novel focus to me.

Distress: Greg Egan; sci-fi

Nice setting, but the protagonist just stumbles around 400 pages.

Permutation City: Greg Egan; sci-fi

Introduces a mind-bendingly great question for materialism, decent plot.

Quarantine: Greg Egan; sci-fi

Causality muddled, hijinks ensue.

Draft Evidence: Dick Disabato, business

Its advertising claimed it’s “how to create a durable, sustainable solo design practice”, but it’s actually unedited reprints of narcissistic email newsletter articles. Dropped early.

Tabletop Games

* Pandemic Legacy: Z-Man Games; co-op

When I first heard of the “legacy” mechanic I thought it was a silly gimmick to sell more copies. This is actually a really clever game that got me re-interested in Pandemic and having fun with friends even though I’d run out of interest in the original Pandemic after three games.

* Star Realms: Robert Dougherty, Darwin Kastle; deckbuilding

Quick, lean take on the genre that I’ve really enjoyed with friends. Incoherent setting, but spaceships. The expansions are too small to have much effect, but Colony Wars is good. Tear up “Stealth needle”, grab a life counter smartphone app, and have a great time.

Twilight Struggle: GMT Games; strategy

Nice to play and great use of the setting, but really wants an experienced player to learn from.

Sushi Go: Phil Walker-Harding; drafting

Delightful all-ages game. Warning: play after dinner, not before, or you’re certain to be ordering sushi.

Kitty Paw: Aza Chen, party

Very cute dexterity/recognition game. Fun limited by wildly different player ability.

Smash-Up: AEG, rulebreaker

Clever and memetasic, but 4+ player games get a bit bogged down in reading lots of unfamiliar rule-tweaking cards.

Seafall: Plaid Hat Games, strategy

Pirate sorta-4X legacy game from the creator of Pandemic Legacy. 4-5 players a must, and at least one player must watch the Watch It Played intro. The rules have been fiddly through the first couple games and it’s getting more complex as things get unlocked. I won’t judge it until we finish, but it’s big step up in complexity from Pandemic Legacy and probably just a hair more complicated than my play group really enjoys.

Video Games

Endless Legend: Amplitude Studios; 4X

Enjoyable grand strategy for people who thought Civ was a bit too short and simple. Missing and poor documentation, so be ready with Google to learn.

Tidalis: Arcen Games; puzzle

Unpolished but deep puzzle game.

The Talos Principle: Croteam; puzzle

Well-paced and highly polished first-person puzzle game.

Crypt of the NecroDancer: Brace Yourself Games; roguelike

Rhythm-based roguelike. Scratched my itch for a brutally difficult but fairly mindless action game for 140+ hours.

Celestian Tales: Old North: Ekuator Games; RPG

Thoroughly generic RPG. Bland presentation, tedious story, uninteresting battles; dropped an hour in.

The Novelist

Sad people choose-your-own adventure. Ignore the shoehorned stealth game mode. Dropped after one chapter.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon: 00-Evan; roguelike

Great little mobile roguelike.

Hero Generations: ReGen: Jon Shafer; roguelike

This refresh fixes enough of the UI issues that I was annoyed at gameplay instead. Probably a solid game, but it’s really hard to feel like I’m learning viable strategies as I play.

Dungeon of the Endless: Amplitude Studios; tower defense

I couldn’t tell if it was unplayable because of bugginess or bad design, but the millimeter-high font has me thinking the latter.

Conquest of Elysium 3: Illwinter; strategy

Basic stack of death turn-based strategy with a clunky UI, but the wonderfully weird factions make this a hidden gem.

* Invisible, Inc., Klei; strategy

Wonderful turn-based tactical stealth with randomized levels, I’ve played 120+ hours. Has a few small UI quirks that UI Tweaks mostly fixes and No Dialogues is essential after two or three playthroughs. (Neither interferes with achievements.)

Podcasts

Since picking up a smartphone I started listening to podcasts with AntennaPod.

* Why Are Computers

Thoughtful, deep interviews.

HaskellCast

Abandoned, but nice interviews with Haskell community members.

This Developer’s Life

Striving vainly for profundity at a glacially slow pace. I skipped ahead to see if it got better, but dropped it after a few episodes.

Magic Read Along

The setup is two experienced devs giving hot takes on tech news, but it’s actually two bros giggling smugly about being unprepared. I have no idea why this was recorded. Dropped after a few.

The Bike Shed

Great chats wandering from day-to-day development work into the deeper underlying topics.

Stacking the Bricks

Getting started in entrepreneurship from two experts.

Sirlin

Game designer David Sirlin and playtesters talk through thorny issues in the design of competitive games.

Ruby Facets

A five-minute weekly podcast on Ruby news. The schedule is off to a shaky start, but fingers crossed it keeps running.

Rationally Writing

Two authors in a niche subgenre of hard sci-fi talk about the craft. Great preparation leads to great discussions.

More Perfect

A thoughtful miniseries about the history of the Supreme Court.

Podcast Method

How to produce a podcast. You can listen to almost any two episodes and have heard everything, though, the long gap between episodes meant it retrod the same ground.

Planet Money

Entertaining (and occasionally disturbing) investigations into the world of finance, broadly defined.

LambdaCast

A friendly introduction to functional programming concepts.

Functional Geekery

Interviews with functional programmers on their careers and work. I wish it had more depth, but it’s still good listening.

Hardcore History

Military history from a guy who gets really excited every time he quotes a primary source.

Criminal

I think it wants to be the Planet Money of crime, and it’s growing towards that level of quality.

Make Money Online

Kai Davis and a tediously smug narcissist chat about the business of consulting. Episode quality is a function of which one speaks more.

Last update: 2017-01-30

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