David Edgar's website

Saturday, 10 May 2025

Recent Books

Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams

You've probably heard of it. NGL I mostly read it because Facebook Striesand'd it by getting an injunction against the author to prevent her publicising it. Brilliant work there to keep it obscure. A memoir of the author's time working Facebook. In (mostly) episodic chapters it tracks her initial enthusiasm for the possibilities of connectivity souring as the leadership reveals their true faces. You can taste the residual animus in the final chapters, particularly the epilogue. Boy howdy did she earn her right to that though. I believe her. Come for the sly anecdotes about Zuckerberg, Sandberg, and Kaplan told with that kind of amused detachment New Zealanders seem to have. Stay for the self-reflection on ideals being lost... in that same amused detachment.

Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells I started re-reading All Systems Red because of the TV adaption about to start (mid-May 2025, I believe). Actually I re-read the series on the regular. It's the competence porn. It's the little bit of identification with Murderbot. Its the tempo of the stories. On Book 6 now.

Monday, 21 April 2025

🔖 In praise of the hundred page idea

There was a set of books by an organisation called The School of Life that I read a few of. They'd kind of fit into this, although the only one I actually own, [Eva Hoffman How to Be Bored

(https://booko.com.au/w/7760978/How-to-be-BoredThe-School-of-LifebyEva-Hoffman-The-School-of-Life) was 141 pages.

Also, I tend to think fantasy and sci-fi fiction went completely the wrong way. Doorstopper tomes to satisfy the weirdest of the fans. The Elric books were 100 pages or so and they were better than almost everything else published for the next 20 years (at least)

Sunday, 15 November 2020

🔖 Google SRE books