In total, I read 64 books. I strictly alternate between fact and fiction otherwise my brain gets confused. I try to maintain an even gender ratio and I like old books as well as new books. I mostly buy eBooks from Kobo now that Amazon has restricted their DRM. I also visit the library for the exceedingly rare times I need a paper book. I'm a member of NetGalley which allows me to receive advance review copies from some authors.

Here's a pretty montage of all their covers:

What do the stats say about my reading habits?

32 of the books I read were solely by men. A few books were compilations or co-authored. A couple of authors are non-binary. The rest were by women.

32 were fiction, 32 were non-fiction.

Only 6 were from before the turn of the century. With Chaucer's Canterbury Tales being the oldest.

My average rating is 3.72⭐. Female books score an average of 3.65, Male 3.8.

I rate fiction higher at 3.87 than non-fiction at 3.68.

Female written non-fiction is rated slightly lower (3.6) than male non-fiction (3.75).

Male written fiction is rated slightly higher (3.84) than female fiction (3.71).

Feel free to download all the semantic metadata for each book if you'd like to run your own fascinating analysis.

Someone asked me how I found the time to read so many books. I just prefer reading to most other activities. Sat on a beach, I can polish off a book a day. When travelling, my eReader carries my entire "to-read" pile. You're never alone with a book.

You can read previous year-end review-of-reviews at 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019.

If you've written a book, please leave a comment and I'll try to read it in 2026.

I'd purchased an eBook and was appalled by how crappy the accessibility was. If you don't know, modern ePub books are just HTML wrapped in a zip file. They have all of the accessibility advantages of the web and should be easy to read no matter if you're sighted or not.

But not this eBook! Part of the story concerned WhatsApp messages sent by the protagonist. Here's one of them:

See that smudge in the middle? The one smaller than a full stop? That's meant to be an emoji. Rather than use an actual emoji, they've stuck in a tiny pixel image which won't scale with text size.

Here is is:

Can't see it? Let me blow it up to a more readable size.

OK, that's annoying for sighted readers, but just about understandable. What about people who are using a screen reader? Luckily, ePubs can use HTML's "alt text" feature which will describe an image which can't be seen.

Curses! That's, perhaps, not too annoying for a decorative image - but later in the book there are pictures of a ransom note. Despite the plot-twisting text in the illustration, the alt text just says "image".

I found the publisher's website and scoffed at their proclaimed accessibility statement. I sent them an email which basically consisted of the above. I realised it was probably futile, but I've got to spend my privilege points somehow.

The next day, they wrote back!

I wanted to reply to let you know we are taking our commitments to accessibility in our ebooks seriously […] I will get our ebook team to check this as a matter of urgency and get back to you with an update.

Fair play. But talk is cheap, would they actually take action? A few days later, they sent a follow-up:

We have checked the file for this title again and found issues with it. We have sent this back to the conversion house to have the file corrected and expect this to be delivered by the end of the week. We would then expect this corrected version to be with Kobo by the end of the following week, i.e. 25th July.

We have also been spot-checking other files to see if there is a wider issue and where necessary will follow the same workflow to ensure fully accessible versions are available as widely as possible.

And, you know what, I think that's totally reasonable. Yeah, they should have caught it before publication - but it is a complex book and they're a small publisher. They took my complaint seriously and actually did something about it.

A week or so rolled by and they sent me this:

Just to update you that we have been back and forth with the conversion house getting this title up to scratch. There were various complicating factors which should now be resolved and an updated file has now been distributed and should be available through your chosen retailer presently. If you have any other queries please do let us know.

I logged on to my eBook provider, clicked "read" and…

It was fixed! All the images had decent alt text as well.

Rather annoyingly, the retailer didn't notify me that there was an update available. I can't blame the publisher for that though.

Still, 3 weeks from report to fix is pretty good I reckon.

When I last contacted a publisher about a mistake in their ebook, it took over 3 months to fix it. Perhaps things are slowly getting better?

Anyway, please complain about poor accessibility. Don't shout into the void of social media - write a polite but insistent email telling (not asking) people to fix their shit. Sometimes, just sometimes, it does work.

Anyway you should read The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett - it is brilliant and accessible.

Of note, for the first time in ages I read a couple of paper books! Like some kind of old-fashioned cave-man!

• Myself When Young from 1938 is astounding. If you want to understand proto-feminism or how society viewed itself, it is a must read.
• The Intergalactic Omniglot was a book I first read in the last century. I bought it as a house-warming present for my mate Jess but couldn't resist re-reading it.

This was a good year for reading books written by people I know!

• The Modern Bestiary is VERY RUDE and funny.
• The Pursuit of Purpose gave me a lot to think about as I go into my mid-life crisis.
• Dystopia X is good knockabout sci-fi fun.
• Somewhere To Be is a brilliant fantasy novel with a quirky twist.

Stats!

• About 60% female authorship (depending on how you count compilations). I've written before about trying to address my gender bias in reading.
• About 50% non-fiction. I try to alternate between the two. So I'm pretty consistent with that!
• My average score is 4 stars. Either I am overly generous or I only read above-average books.
• Male authors get an average score of 3.9, whereas female authors do slightly better at 4.3.
• I rate fiction and non-fiction about the same.

Feel free to grab the metadata from my archives if you want a deeper dive.

I've read and reviewed around 300 books over the last few years. So I wrote a scrap of code which goes through all my book reviews, grabs their cover and rating, and displays them in a nice grid. You can visit it at shkspr.mobi/blog/library

You know how when you're at a friend's home you rummage through their bookshelf? That's the same idea here. You get to poke through the stacks and, hopefully, pick out something entertaining to read. Or, perhaps, you'll be warned off something truly dreadful.

All the code for my blog is open source - and I'd be delighted if you did something interesting with it.

This was heavily inspired by Dave Rupert's bookshelf.

When I search for my name in Google Books, it returns books I have reviewed. These aren't books that I've written. They don't mention, quote, or cite me. My reviews don't appear on the dust-jacket. Google has got confused.

Here's an example.

Go to the Google Books Advanced Search Page - marvel at how it retain the old Google logo and looks like it hasn't been updated since the early 2000s!

When I do a search for "Terence Eden" - these are the results.

I have reviewed both Terry Pratchett's Discworld Imaginarium (excellent) and Good Data by Sam Gilbert (terrible) - but that's my only connection to them. If you go into the results in Google Books, you won't find my name at all. It's not like Google adds my reviews into its service either.

This has been a problem for at least four years.

As I scroll through the results, there are several books which do mention me (thanks authors!) but loads which are just picking up my review.

To get an idea of the scale of the problem, here's a search for my name in books published during the last few years. Nearly every result is a book I have reviewed. None of those books contain my name.

Now, earlier I said it is impossible to report bugs to Google Books. That's not quite true. Last year I contacted them on Twitter. They said:

Google Books

@googlebooks

Replying to @edent@edent Hi, thank you for your feedback. I've passed it along to our engineering team. -Cait

---

*sigh*

Perhaps their pivot to AI will fix their towering pile of bugs?

I decided to create a photo-mosaic of a nice photo of me and my wife - using all our book covers.

The Result

Close Up

The image was printed on high-quality canvas - which gives it a pleasing texture and isn't too glossy. Zoomed in, this is what it looks like: As you can see, there is a fair amount of detail on the canvas. Enough so that most titles and authors are legible.

Method

So, here's how to make something like this:

Pick a nice photo

Duh! We chose a selfie my wife took on our road-trip across New Zealand. A happy memory where we both look pretty good, and there's not too much detail in the background.

Get your mosaic tiles

I use Calibre to manage all our eBooks. Run this script to grab all the book covers, and copy them to a directory. All the covers are named cover.jpg - so this renames them sequentially

#!/bin/bash
OUTDIR=~/bookmosaic/
i=0

find /home/whatever/Calibre\ Library -name *.jpg |
while read FILE; do
  OUTFILE="$i.jpg"
  cp -p "$FILE" "$OUTDIR$OUTFILE"
  ((i++))
done

Trim the covers

In order to remove any excess whitespace around the covers, I used ImageMagick's trim command

mogrify -bordercolor white -border 10x10 +repage -fuzz 20% -trim +repage *.jpg

That adds a small white border, then trims it and any other white-ish colours. Without that, it will trim the base colour of the image.

Prune your covers

I ended up with about 3,000 book covers. Hey, we read a lot! But some of the covers were pretty low resolution, some looked crap, and some were from books we didn't want on our walls.

So we flipped through each one and deleted anything that wasn't right for us. A tedious and manual process.

Mosaic Time

There are lots of mosaic programs for Linux. Sadly most seem to be abandoned. I ended up using ImageMosaicWall because it was fairly modern and had a relatively simple GUI

Not the most polished interface, but simple enough to use. Select the image you want to turn into a mosaic, select a folder full of images, fiddle with the resolution and off you go. Even on my modest laptop it took less than a minute to crunch through the images and create the final result.

Resolution

There are two parts to the resolution question - what size will this be printed, and how many columns / rows do you want?

We picked a 75cm x 100cm canvas. According to Photobox, they print at 200dpi so require a 6,000px x 8,000px image.

Next, how many covers are needed to make an image which is recognisable? At 75 covers wide and 75 covers high, the resultant mosaic looked pretty good from a distance. But each book cover would have been a centimetre wide - which would have made most of them unrecognisable. At, say, 50 by 50 the book covers would have been much clearer - but at the expense of the overall image coherence.

I settled on 64x64. That gave a good balance between individual covers and making the photo recognisable.

Variations and Limitations

64² = 4,096 tiles. But I only have about 2,500 covers. That means, inevitably, some will be repeated. The default setting of ImageMosaicWall doesn't have any variation. Which means that the same cover can be repeated multiple times - especially on similar colours like the sky. Here's what it looks like:

Eurgh!

I played around with the variation setting to find a good balance of non-repeating books and overall image legibility. It worked pretty well but there are still a few instances where a book is found in close proximity to itself:

There are different mosaic tools which allow you to set how often an image is reused.

Another thing to note is that the original cover images all have different aspect ratios. This means the algorithm applies some cropping - mostly, it seems, to the bottom:

Print It!

As mentioned, I used Photobox. They were running a promotion so the canvas, hanging kit, and delivery came to about £60. I'll be honest, that's a bit more than I wanted to spend - but they were recommended to me and were the only printer I could find who would print at 200dpi.

I uploaded the 96MB image, picked my settings, and typed in my credit card details.

A few days after uploading, it arrived - and was hung in pride of place.

Lessons learned

A few things that I wish I'd done differently, or that I may do if I try this again:

• Do a test print. I was over-eager to try this out so I paid £60 for the full thing. I should have paid a tenner for a much smaller test to see if the resolution was good enough.
• Get higher quality covers. Some of my eBooks didn't have great covers. I should have spent time making sure that they were all at the highest resolution possible.
• Get more covers. The 2,500 covers weren't sufficient to provide the most detail and there was quite a lot of repetition. I should have added more - perhaps including video game covers and album covers.
• Be more selective. If I look closely, there are a few books on there which I'm not overly happy about being on display. Nothing too disgusting, just things which have fallen far out of fashion. I should have spent more time pruning the list.
• Normalise the size of the covers. Because they were all different aspect ratios, some have been cropped quite severely. I should have used ImageMagick to extend the edges of any book which didn't have a ratio of 3:4.
• Use a full-bleed print. Mine stops just after the side, which leaves a bit of a white edge. That's mostly a limitation of my original photo though.
• Tweak the algorithm to set a minimum distance between identical covers.

But, perfect is the enemy of done. I'm pleased enough with the print. It isn't perfect - but I actually saw something though from idea to creation. And now we have something on our wall which is personal, meaningful, and co-created.

And isn't a bloody "Live Laugh Love" stencil!

Suppose you've reviewed lots of books. It's pretty easy to generate a link to let people buy the book at Amazon or any other online store. But how do you link to a user's local library?

You can't. There is no "search every library in the UK" service⁰. You can search the British Library, but they generally don't deliver to your local town centre.

Here's how to (almost) search local libraries for books.

eBooks

eBook behemoth OverDrive rules the roost when it comes to providing library services in the UK. As far as I can tell, they have the monopoly on eBook lending in UK libraries. That's a shame, because monopolies usual mean crap service. But it is also handy because you can use their service as a meta-search engine for local library books.

OverDrive's API is invite-only, but their search is pretty easy to manipulate. There's no way to search for an ISBN, but a title search will suffice:

https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=song+of+achilles

That goes to a page with eBooks and AudioBooks - as well as a few other close matches.

Selecting a book takes you to a page which shows which of your local libraries has the book available to borrow.

It isn't perfect. The "local" part seems to use GeoIP to guess where you are. Lots of eBooks aren't available on OverDrive. Oh, and it doesn't do legacy (paper) books.

But, it's better than nothing.

Paper Books

OK, suppose you're one of those old-fashioned fuddy-duddies who prefers dead tree format? How do you search for those relics in a local library? Enter WorldCat!

WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information.

Again, their search URl is pretty easy to manipulate:

https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_bks&q=song+of+achilles

Quickly takes you to a list of books:

Visiting one of those links takes you to a list of local libraries - again, it guesses your locations:

But, sadly, most of those links are broken.

Some gave me errors, some redirected to the front page of the library website, some went in endless redirect loops. Not one single link took me directly to a page where I could borrow the book from my local library.

Now what?

I'm at a loss. The bottom of my review page looks like this:

I'd love to point that library link to WorldCat - but it is just too unreliable. So I'm sticking with OverDrive for now.

Anyway - read more books, and borrow them from your local library if you can. Libraries are brilliant.

David Coates

@OziasMidwinter

Bookshop clock... pic.x.com/1tvwJiI4kn

---

I wondered - if it was possible to create a similar clock using books from a single author? So here's my first attempt - using Agatha Christie's novels.

I've tried to use first edition covers, where possible. There are a few notable absences - 8, 9, and 11. The 2 is represented by "And two other stories" - which is a bit weak! If you can suggest ways to fill the gaps, I'd love your ideas.

Or, if you can think of a prolific author who can easily fill the twelve spaces, do let me know!

Other Suggestions

Richard Morton (he/him)

@accessibleweb

@edent A Roman Numerals one could work with tech books e.g Vi editor, OS X

---

Obviously, COVID had a fairly negative effect on my reading rate. I went months without touching a book, and some evenings I could only get a few pages in before giving in to the need to doom-scroll. I love reading recreationally, and I need to get back into the habit. I wish I could read while exercising. So I was pretty pleased to finish 42.

(OK, some of the authors are non-binary. And I cheated with a new Terry Pratchett picture book and a couple of the other books were compendiums which had male and female writers. Oh, and This Is How You Lose the Time Ware has a male and female author)

So, why this challenge? Last year, 50% of the authors I read were female. But I reckon I have a gender deficit across my lifetime. Most of the time, I don't really pay attention to the race or gender of the authors - if indeed I notice them at all. But it is good to correct imbalances in our life.

Women write great books. They also write terrible books. This doesn't come as a surprise, I hope. I'm sure that I could do some analysis to show that female academics use different word-length than male authors. But who can be bothered with that?

I try to read an equal mix of fiction and fact and, again unsurprisingly, there was no shortage of great books to choose from.

Sometimes the challenge was frustrating. One of my favourite (male) authors released a long-awaited book, which I couldn't read. Of course, the lovely thing about books is that people rarely post GIFs with spoilers in them. That book will still be there for me to read next year.

After the horrors unfolding around the world, I deliberately set out to read more books about racism. They were eye-opening. Especially "Brit(ish)".

It is fun reading books from people who have different experiences and backgrounds to you. This challenge wasn't about escaping my bubble; it was about managing the bias accrued from a lifetime of living inside it.

Katie Fenn

@katie_fenn

I was recently asked by someone in the tech industry if I read any conservative media in the interests of balance.

The answer is no.

I spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up in a Tory family. That was enough.

---

Katie Fenn

@katie_fenn

Replying to @katie_fennThe way I see it is not “how do I escape my bubble” it’s “how do I manage the bias accrued from half a lifetime of living inside it”.

---

What's my challenge for next year? I think just to read more. And read more widely.

You can see my upcoming reading list and, if you like, buy me a book.

There are a few things that really annoy me from a usability point of view. Some of these are the fault of the author, some the publisher, some the eBook format¹, and some the reader app.

Firstly, what's the point of a footnote? This is a rough and untested bit of user-storying...

• As a reader, I want to look up a reference to a quoted work. So that I can see if the author is being accurate.
• As a reader, I want to know a little more about the subject being discussed. Because I'm interested in this specific topic
• As a reader, I want to understand what a newly introduced term means. So that I can understand the rest of the book.

But, there's also another user, who often takes precedence:

• As an author, I want to show that I have done my research. So that critics can't use that to question my credibility.
• As an author, I want to add more details which don't fit in the main body of the text. Because I hate deleting text and my editor told me to take it out.
• As an author, I want to add an explanation for some jargon or terminology. So that readers unfamiliar with the subject don't feel excluded.

(This isn't a thorough bit of user research. It's just me noodling around. Feel free to add your own, well-researched, stories.)

Types of footnotes

In my experience, there are four types of footnote:

1. A citation. Anything from something a bit useless like "(Smith 1984.)" to a fully semantic "Baucherel, Kate, Blockchain Hurricane. Business Expert Press. 2020".
2. A long note. A diversion which, while interesting, is not relevant to the main argument. Think of it a bit like a Director's Commentary on a DVD.
3. A short note. Usually an explanation of an TLA² or technical term.
4. A comedy footnote³.

Here's my problem / User Need - how does a user know which type of footnote they are encountering?

In the wild

Let's take an example. I'm currently reading "Race After Technology" by Ruha Benjamin". It's an excellent book. But I am unsure how I am supposed to read it⁴. (This criticism applies to most books I've read, but this is what I'm currently reading.)

In this example, I click on ¹³ and my ebook reader - KOReader displays a little pop-up at the bottom of the screen.

Before I tap the link - I've no idea what's behind it. And, that's assuming that I know that reference numbers are tappable, and that the tap-target is large enough that I don't accidentally interact with the book in some other way.

Here's another, from the same page: Here the author provides a citation and some explanatory text. How does an author decide what goes in the body and what goes in the notes? How does the user know whether the footnote is a citation or is explanatory?

Finally, again from the same page, there's this: This footnote is so long that the UI pop-up isn't big enough to contain it and displays a scrollbar.

Again, this isn't a criticism of this specific author. This happens on lots of books. The publishing industry seems to have a complete disregard for the user's need.

How do users read? Do they want to click on every footnote link they encounter? Do they expect to read them at the end? Does having a mixture of notes and citations confuse them?

Specification

The ePub specification talks about how to handle footnotes. One of the great things about ePub is that it is based on HTML5. The footnote markup is pretty simple:

<p>
   In that year<a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/07/usability-of-footnotes/#ft2f" role="doc-noteref" epub:type="noteref">2</a> there were 67 mills engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods …
</p>

<aside id="ft2f" role="doc-footnote" epub:type="footnote">
   <p>
     2 The manufacturing statistics for 1900 which follow are not those given in the Twelfth Census, but are taken from the <em>Census of Manufactures</em> …
   </p>
</aside>

Most eBook publishers also include a back-link, so that users can easily return to the main text.

The specification doesn't say whether citations should be displayed differently to footnotes.

I guess it would be easy to add class="citation" and have the CSS .citation::before {content="cite ";}

That would allow users to differentiate between ^{cite 2} and ^{note 2}.

Usability

There are some "technical" usability issues here. How the user interacts with links, whether the note appears as a pop-up or inline, and the process of returning to the main text.

But I want to talk about the cognitive issues at play. When footnotes can contain anything from a citation to essential background information, the user is forced to break from the flow⁵ of reading - often in the middle of a sentence. This is a problem in both paper books and electronic books.

I'm still stuck on the user needs. It seems to me that most footnotes are for the author's benefit. If the text is that important, it should be in the main body. If it isn't, leave it out.

Abbreviations can be dealt with inline using the <abbr> element. You should be able to to tap on the TLA to get the definition.

As for citations? Isn't that what HTML links are for? Just link directly to the document in question as part of the running text.

Would it make life easier for reader to include a fully semantic citation inline? Take this scrap of imaginary text:

There are many websites about Shakespeare. As is discussed in Eric M. Johnson's Opening Shakespeare from the Margins (2017), 187-205 Springer International Publishing The Shakespeare User the use of open source software has seen...

Which can be represented by the HTML code:

<span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle">
   <span itemprop="citation">
      <span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
         <span itemprop="name">
            <span itemprop="familyName">Johnson</span>, 
            <span itemprop="givenName">Eric M.</span>
         </span>
      </span> 
      <q>
         <a itemprop="url" href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61015-3_10">
            <cite itemprop="headline">Opening Shakespeare from the Margins</cite>
         </a>
      </q> 
      (<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2017">2017</time>)  
      page: <span itemprop="pagination">187-205</span>. 
      <span itemprop="publisher" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
         <span itemprop="name">Springer International Publishing</span>
      </span>. 
      <span itemprop="publication">The Shakespeare User</span>.
   </span>
</span>

CSS could be used to show / hide various parts of the citation until interacted with. A reader familiar with hypertext should know that visiting a link will take them to an external site. No need for footnotes at all!

Obviously, I haven't done any proper usability studies. Nor have I spoken to any users other than myself.

But surely we need a better way of making footnotes and citations better for readers?

What's next

There have been many attempts to get a <footnote> element into HTML. I think there's some value in adding semantic information to a document. But I probably think that the <aside> element and <cite> element are good enough.

Perhaps the W3C Publishing Group needs to fund some user research to see if ePub notes and citations work well for most users.

Perhaps authors need to realise that linear text is a relic of paper-based publishing and that hypertext affords new ways for a reader to journey through a text.

Or, perhaps, I need to learn how to read without getting distracted.

Our previous trip was a 3 week road-trip through Australia, so this time I opted for an all-inclusive break in the Canaries at an adults-only hotel. I spent a week lying in the sunshine, eReader in hand, pausing only for the occasional cocktail.

I thoroughly recommend this sort of holiday. If you have a "staycation", there will be all sorts of little jobs to distract you. Laundry, phone calls, making your own food. Having nothing to do, no commitments, is a superb way to read without distraction. I often find that if I read a book over several days, I get confused. I forget characters, or can't remember the conclusion to an academic argument. Reading all at once is such a joy.

(Aside: yes, I know I'm privileged. I have the resources to fly somewhere warm, a generous leave policy at work, and am happily child-free.)

Something I discovered about reading books in quick succession is that I need to alternate my reading. If I read two fiction books in a row, my mind treats them as a single novel. So I flip between fiction and non-fiction. I also swap fonts between books to help with the transition.

This year, I'm only reading books by women. Looking back over my previous reviews, I mostly read male authors. So this is an attempt to correct this imbalance.

(OK, I've cheated once this year by reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld Imaginarium - but that's a picture-book, so doesn't count. Right?)

If you'd like to see what's on my to-read pile (or want to buy me a book) my reading list is on Amazon.

Anyway, here are the eleven books what I read...

The Entrepreneurial State - Mariana Mazzucato

★★★★☆

This book debunks the myth of the State as a large bureaucratic organization that can at best facilitate the creative innovation which happens in the dynamic private sector. It argues that in the history of modern capitalism the State has not only fixed market failures but also shaped and created markets, actively investing in new technologies and sectors that private investors only later find the courage to move into.

A profoundly important book. Your iPhone - and most other high tech stuff - is based off state-sponsored research. For every Venture Capitalist saying "the free market made this possible" there is an army of publicly funded developers. Sometimes, in the case of GPS, a literal army!

It makes a compelling case for the funding of basic and experimental research and development. We need long-term planning, rather than short-term profit chasing.

My only criticisms of this book are based on me not reading many academic books. I don't understand how a reference that just says "Smith (1904)" is helpful to anyone. It is also repetitive - I suspect because it is a collection of related essays, rather than a unified book. I also wonder whether it is normal for an author to continually cite their own work.

Either way, it clearly presents a well-researched argument and exhaustively demonstrates its veracity.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site Publisher

Just One Damned Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor

★★★⯪☆

The first book in the bestselling Chronicles of St Mary's series which follows a group of tea-soaked disaster magnets as they hurtle their way around History.

This is stupid amounts of fun! A roaring adventure through time. Doesn't bother getting hung-up on paradoxes - or science - but goes straight for the heart of history. Historians!

Specifically, historians fightin', drinkin', and shaggin' their way through the space-time continuum.

There are several points where the book could have ended satisfactorily, with suitable cliff-hangers. But each subsequent chapter brought more fun. I'm not sure I have the energy to read all 9 novels in one sitting - but I'm looking forward to rejoining the gang on my next holiday.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff

★⯪☆☆☆

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deeply-reasoned examination of the threat of unprecedented power free from democratic oversight. As it explores this new capitalism's impact on society, politics, business, and technology, it exposes the struggles that will decide both the next chapter of capitalism and the meaning of information civilization. It shows how we can protect ourselves and our communities and ensure we are the masters of the digital rather than its slaves.

Possibly the worst book I've read all year. It would be twice as good if it were half as long. It would be a hundred times better if the author hadn't confused polysyllabic words with an effective argument.

The worst thing is - I think I probably agree with most of this book. But it is so turgid and (I hate to use this word) hysterical that I don't think it will produce meaningful change.

The author clearly sets out how surveillance has become the lifeblood for modern internet companies. I fully agree with her analysis. Although it is written in such a convoluted fashion that I doubt most people will make it through the first few chapters.

Next, it moves on to advertising. Again, I agree that targetting advertising is a nuisance. I don't think it is particularly evil - but I block it all anyway. There's no argument presented - we just have to take it on faith that targetting is bad.

I found myself skimming large chunks of chapters in an attempt to find a sentence which made sense. Here's a typical bit of academic-babble:

We may yet see the founding of a new synthesis for a third modernity in which a genuine inversion and its social compact are institutionalized as principles of a new rational digital capitalism aligned with a society of individuals and supported by democratic institutions.

I've read that several times and I'm still no closer to deciphering it. The whole book is like that. Purple-prose utterly lacking in simplicity.

Another section deals with population control. We're told that in the future, our cars will be tied into surveillance systems. If we drive dangerously, or miss a payment, they'll be disabled.

At which point, I found myself thinking "...good?" I mean... if you're a bad driver, what's wrong with putting up your insurance premiums? If you're lumped in to a high-premium demographic, why should you have to subsidise the prices of your riskier cohort? Perhaps you can explain the problem to me - because the author didn't.

The book mentions the story of the repossession agent who helped crowdfund car repayments for a delinquent couple. This was presented as a heart-warming tale - but I found it chilling. Rather than the impartial laws of mathematics, people have to be telegenic and sympathetic in order get out of debt. Somehow, that's presented as the preferable option.

Finally... Well, there is no finally. There's no list of tips for how users can protect themselves (download Firefox and use an adblocker would be my advice). It's just a pure emotional howl of rage. Perhaps that's cathartic for some, but it doesn't change the world.

This book is important. Far too important to be this badly written.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

Sorcerer to the Crown - Zen Cho

★★★★☆

Winner of the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Newcomer. Shortlisted for the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel. Shortlisted for the 2016 Locus First Novel Award. Sorcerer to the Crown is the first in Zen Cho's thrilling magical adventure series, the Sorcerer Royal Trilogy.

This was an absolute delight to read. Magic, racism, and sexism, wrapped together with international politics.

It is, basically, fan-fiction for the "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" universe. With a dash of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. In courtly Olde Englande magicians preen themselves despite the fact that English Magic Is In Peril!

Yes, it is derivative, but it is so much fun that I'm prepared to forgive it. There are no big surprises - the baddies are obvious bad and the plucky young girl is rewarded for her vim and vigour. It's an entertaining universe to spend time in.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

The Guilty Feminist - Deborah Frances-White

★★★★⯪

Why do we find it so hard to say 'No'? What does poker teach us about power structures? How can feminism be more inclusive? The Guilty Feminist will challenge you, reassure you and empower you to see the world differently.

A fantastic book. Even if you've listened religiously to The Guilty Feminist Podcast, or seen the author's solo shows, there's plenty of new material in here.

It's a powerful and inclusive piece of work. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about modern feminism, I guarantee you'll find something new - and breathtaking - in there.

It'll get you angry, fired-up, and hopeful for the future.

I stopped highlighting passages halfway through, because it feels like every other sentence could be pasted on a t-shirt. This is the one which resonated the most for me:

If you’ve been raised with running water and had it every day of your life, you will feel entitled to it. Hot and cold water from a tap doesn’t occur in nature, so this is a privilege you’ve always known that’s come to feel like a right. If your water got turned off today, you’d phone the council. If it wasn’t back on in forty-eight hours you’d be tweeting, and if it wasn’t restored in a week you’d be writing angry letters. At no point would you think, ‘Well, I guess we don’t have running water any more. Where’s the closest river? I guess I’ll have to walk down there with a jug on my head.’ Although many people around the world live like that every day, it would almost certainly never be acceptable to you because running water is your standard, your normal, your expectation. Entitlement is the residue of privilege.

Buy it now: Amazon

Alone Together - Sherry Turkle

★★★★★

Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a deep solitude. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down.

A profound and moving book. It neatly describes how online socialising tickles some parts of our needy brains, without actually fulfilling them. At times, this book is touchingly naive - we're no closer to having the social robots that it predicted - but the sentiment is completely correct. We all want to be loved and will anthropomorphise anything we can.

The strength comes from the narrative encounters with the book's subjects. Each statistic is neatly paired with an emotional anecdote.

It will absolutely change the relationship you have with the little dopamine-spurting icons you see in your social media feed.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

Sapience - Alexis Lantgen

★★★★★

What kind of life will we find in the depths of Europa's Oceans? What kind of life will we allow an AI with human level intelligence? The ten stories in Sapience: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories explore these questions and many more.

A delightful - and weird - collection of sci-fi shorts. All loosely tied together by the looming moon of Jupiter.

A couple were a little too grim and visceral for my liking. But each was compelling and perfectly composed.

Buy it now: Amazon Publisher

The Pursuit of William Abbey - Claire North

★★★★⯪

A young and naive English doctor, William Abbey, witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William. William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.

I love Claire North's writing. This latest novel follows her regular template - a person with uncanny abilities has to survive a world which wants to abuse their talents.

It's a long and winding tale, almost a travelogue. It gradual ratchets up the tension and horror building to a satisfying conclusion.

There's also a lovely bit of fan service which vzcyvrf gung zbfg bs ure obbxf gnxr cynpr va gur fnzr havirefr!

Perhaps my only criticism is that it's a little long. I guess it just represents excellent value for money.

Well worth reading her previous novels. "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" is sublime. "The Sudden Appearance of Hope" is excellent. "The End of The Day" is magical. And 84k is pretty good too!

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong

★★⯪☆☆

Karen Armstrong's concise yet compelling investigation into the history of myth takes us from the Palaeolithic period and the mythology of the hunters right up to the 'Great Western Transformation' of the last 500 years. She shows us that the history of myth is the history of humanity, and our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other.

A crisp and meticulously referenced work. But, as the title suggests, all-too-brief. It tracks the development of Palaeolithic myths to their modern counterparts. But it feels like the reader is already expected to know the details of each one.

It left me hungry for more - which I guess is the point. But at times I felt I was reading the Wikipedia excerpts of major works.

Buy it now: Amazon

Something Beginning With - Sarah Salway

★☆☆☆☆

Written in brief entries from ‘Ambition’ to ‘Zzzzz’ Salway's confident debut novel chronicles the existential ups and downs of British 20-something Verity Bell. The alphabetically arranged mini-chapters make for an inventive and episodic narrative, as Verity muses on her career .

For some reason I purchased this in 2013 and left it 7 years before reading. I wish I'd left it 70.

I don't usually read sappy romantic / emotionally manipulative novels. And this is why. It's a sad and pathetic story about a set of sad and pathetic characters. I felt nothing but contempt for them and their predicaments.

I suppose, if you want to feel smugly superior to someone making worse life-choices than you, this book would do the trick.

Buy it now: Amazon

The Memory Illusion - Julia Shaw

★★★★★

In The Memory Illusion, forensic psychologist and memory expert Dr Julia Shaw draws on the latest research to show why our memories so often play tricks on us - and how, if we understand their fallibility, we can actually improve their accuracy. The result is an exploration of our minds that both fascinating and unnerving, and that will make you question how much you can ever truly know about yourself.

Possibly the most disturbing book I've read. Your mind is nothing. Your memories are mailable. Everything you think you remember can be trivially rewritten. Oh, and Dr Shaw can scramble your brain with nothing more than her superpowers words.

I've had a hard time reading academic books recently. So I was most encouraged by the intro:

I live by this philosophy of explanatory parsimony myself, though of course it does sometimes come at the cost of explanatory adequacy. In other words, when I explain concepts by using analogies, stories or simplifications, I always risk losing some of the nuances of the inherently complex issues under discussion.

The book is beautifully laid out, and has a light tone which pushes through some of the drier aspects of neuroscience. I loved the way it ran through the history of memory - right up to cutting edge research.

I completely recommend this book. And I have fond memories of reading it. I think.

Buy it now: Amazon Author's Site

Well, I fell a little short of that target - what with getting a new job, moving house, road-tripping across Australia - but I'm pretty pleased with the total.

50 books read and reviewed!

It has been a bit tough getting into the swing of reading again. I get about an hour on the train each day, and an hour or so before I fall asleep. I do most of my reading in all-day chunks on holiday.

I deliberately alternate between fiction and non-fiction. I know this sounds weird, but I use a serif font for non-fiction and sans-serif for fiction. Helps my brain switch between books.

This year I've consciously tried a more diverse reading list. Half the books have been by female authors, and I've chosen more books by PoC and Queer writers. I've enjoyed reading stuff that normally wouldn't make my reading list - and I want to read more. It's boring just reading stuff you already know you'll either like or agree with.

Writing reviews is a weird experience. I'm mostly writing for my own memory - but even so, I try to avoid major plot points or spoilers. I don't think anyone is reading my reviews - but I enjoy jotting down my thoughts.

I've been using the excellent WordPress plugin Recencio Book Reviews which lets me add all sorts of metadata in Schema.org JSON-LD format. That means search engines can pick up and display the review information:

Sadly, my trusty Nook e-Reader is nearing the end after 6 years of faithful service. The screen is scratched, the buttons stick, and it is getting a bit slow. Time for a new toy soon!

So - what should I read next? Suggestions in the comments box, please!

Talks

The lovely folk at JS Oxford invited me to talk about my recent experiments with SVG.

Headlining the bill was the brilliant Nicky Thompson with her talk about CSS shapes.

Work

Mostly deleting emails, as is appropriate after a holiday. As for the rest...

• Bugs in publishing.
  • As part of my quest to ensure all government documents are open, I occasionally come across quirks like this.
    
    
• Better ODF guidance.
  • One continual (and justified) complaint we got was around letting users know what software they can use to view ODT/ODS files. Now, every file has a link telling users what software is available for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, etc.
    
• Dual publishing for ODF.
  • I've been going around speaking to departments to make sure they know that they have to use ODF. Some are now publishing in both XLS and ODS! Brilliant!
• Welsh.
  • GDS has a statutory obligation to support the Welsh language. However, I've noticed that the HTML5 attribute lang="cy" is inconsistently applied. That can make it hard for screen-readers and other tools to realise they're looking at a different language. Issue raised, hopefully fixed soon. Rwy'n gobeithio y gall cyfrifiaduron ddarllen y Gymraeg yn fuan!
• Unicode.
  • The Open Standards Board originally fixed our approved standard as Unicode 6.2 - we wanted to update it to Unicode 11. This is about more than emoji - there's a bunch of internationalisation stuff which is really useful. Board approved the change, so now we're just updating things and communicating the change.
• W3C stuff.
  • Having done a huge bunch of editing on HTML5.3, I'm now taking a small step back. I need to get more people in government interested in joining working groups.
• Job interview.
  • I like to apply for interesting looking jobs - even though I'm happy where I am. It's a good excuse to brush up my CV. I'm enormously grateful to the people in my office who gave me a mock interview. I highly recommend getting friends and colleagues to practice with.

Reading List

I took a fortnight off. Literally all I did was read books and binge-watch Doctor Who. Bliss. Here's my reading list. I tend to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. Amazon affiliate links ahead...

Non-Fiction

• Made by Humans - Ellen Broad

  • My old pal Ellen has written a marvellous book about AI and the human foundations of its data. It is the most compelling & timely book on the intersection of AI, policy, ethics, and law. Well researched and perfectly argued

• NASA Open Government Plan

  • Good overview of how different departments in NASA are adapting to the Open Revolution. A little repetitive, and probably mostly of interest to space nerds and standards geeks like me.

• Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact - Steven Kotler

  • A fun romp through some near-future gazing. The author is too credulous at times, a dissenting or sceptical view is rarely sought. An odd emphasis on religion in some places which I found off-putting.

• Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work - Alex Williams

  • Almost unreadable. The sort of book which mistakes polysyllabism for intellectual rigour. Some words were just made up, and some sentences I had to read multiple times to comprehend. I'm sure there's a kernel of a good argument in there, but it's buried too far beneath the convoluted syntax.

• Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss

  • What can an FBI hostage negotiator teach you about communication in business? A slightly silly book - lots of gung-ho adventures - but a decent primer on negotiation. What I most admired was, unlike many other business books, the author talks about his failures.

• The Second Machine Age - Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies - Erik Brynjolfsson

  • Brings home the fact that - if all robotic predictions come true - the world could be scary. What are the risks and opportunities. I can't say I learned anything new - but it helped crystallise my thoughts around the future of work. More on that later!

• The Boy Who Could Change the World - selected writings of Aaron Swartz

  • A time-capsule. Some of the essays are still relevant, some are deeply of their time. I'm not sure if I'd want to be judged by the posts I wrote when I was a teenager. Beautiful writing, but it put me in mind of this Jay Foreman song.

Fiction

• Early Riser - Jasper Fforde

  • An orphan, living in a quirky Britain, takes on a perilous quest, with quirky characters, and quirky dialogue, and quirky footnotes. A pleasant read - but nothing new for Fforde fans.

• The Dark Forest (The Three-Body Problem Book 2) - Cixin Liu

  • Epic sci-fi. It had been too long since I read the first book, so I struggled a bit to remember the complex plot. The second half is superb, absolutely breathtaking.

• Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood

  • Astonishing. Just the most ridiculously fun mix of madness and prison caper.

• Lock In - John Scalzi

  • I usually love Scalzi's work - but this fell a little flat with me. In a world where people can take over other bodies, detectives struggle to solve a case. Spoiler - someone took over someone else's body.

• The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - Imogen Hermes Gowar

  • Perfect! A delightful blend of historic accuracy, bawdy tales, and mystical revelations. Reminiscent of Tracy Chevalier in the way it mixes fact and fiction - and that's no bad thing. And I've just realised that Imogen, Tracy, and I all went to UEA - albeit at different times.

If you've written a book - let me know!

I only had 7 days, and did quite a lot of sight-seeing, so there's only 6 entries here. Will try for a more relaxing holiday next year!

First up, "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel.

A cracking "end of the world" novel, neatly tied together via Shakespeare's King Lear. As we were staying in a villa in the middle of nowhere, the haunting descriptions of isolation really resonated with me.

It isn't markedly different from most other apocalyptic fiction novels - and the "twist" is pretty obvious - but it doesn't suffer unduly for it. It cracks along at a fair pace and is generous with its humour, despair, and flashbacks.

The only real criticism is that electricity is seen as an almost mythical element. In reality, small solar chargers and hand cranks are readily available and quite sufficient to power, say, walkie-talkies, torches, music players etc.

Still, a great yarn.

On to "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell.

I've decidedly mixed feelings on this one. Without a doubt it is an epic and thoroughly disturbing tale of "First Contact". In terms of "hard" sci-fi it pretty much has it all - and the science is impeccable.

And yet, the theology… This is a tale of "Jesuits in Spaaaaaaace" so it is understandable that their morally dubious superstitions would be at the forefront of the plot. But it is laid on with such a heavy trowel that I honestly thought that it might be a Scientology-esque tale designed to convert and conscript the unwary.

Because all the characters are motivated by religious fervour, I found it rather hard to relate to them. By the end, however, I found myself wondering if this book - almost revelling in its torture-porn - was a warning against organised religion.

Sublime sci-fi, but not for the faint-of-heart.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Have a book reading holiday coming up.
What are your favourite female-authored Sci-fi novels?

Go!

---

Stefan Czerniawski

@pubstrat

Replying to @edent@edent The Just City, Radiant, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Infidel

---

After the bleakness of "The Sparrow" it was a blessed relief to read "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" by Claire North. The plot is simple - Groundhog Day but for your entire life. When you die, you're immediately reborn - with memories intact - as yourself.

I didn't want the book to end! It was joyful in its mastery of time-travel story telling. Although dealing with some weighty topics, it had a delightful lightness of touch that made the whole book skip along. At times, it felt like I was reading the extended adaptation of a BBC mini-series, so clearly could I see all the characters.

It's rare to find a book seemingly without flaws - but this simply sparkles with delight and ingenuity. It is spy-thriller, cold-war noir, boys-own adventure, and desperately sad love story rolled into one.

Chris Mcr

@chrismcr101

@edent Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid's Tale, Lauren Beukes - The Shining Girls

---

The only real dud of the recommendations was "The Shining Girls" by Lauren Beukes.

This was a real disappointment. It's sort-of sci-fi - in that the murder can travel through time - but there's no explanation of why the murders are being committed. No reason given as to why the girls are "shining". No insight into the mind of the killer nor the powers which are driving him.

Perhaps it is that I don't read many thrillers but I found the whole book unsatisfying. The protagonists will never be able to solve the mystery because no-one suspects time-travel as an MO - so it feels like the whole story is a waste of time. Ah well.

Finally, I hit a gold mine!

Mark O'Neill

@marxculture

Replying to @edent@edent Ancillary Justice, The Dispossessed, Brightness Falls From the Air

---

James Tiptree Jr is the pen-name of Alice Sheldon - an Air Force Major, CIA operative, and Doctor of Experimental Psychology. Although she wrote many short stories, James only wrote two novels - now gathered in one eBook collection.

Up the Walls of the World is, frankly, a belter! Telepaths, flying aliens, military experiments, doomsday devices! What more could you want from a sci-fi novel? The way she writes about the alien experience is perfect, never getting bogged down in exposition, never giving in to the temptation to make their world more relateable.

Bonus points for what must be a very early mention of the Internet - dialling up to connect to super-computers FTW!

The final book was "Brightness Falls From the Air." What starts off as a charming backwater sci-fi tale quickly descends (or ascends) into a Agatha Christie-style whodunnit. There's scheming, sex, drugs, intrigue, unrequited love, and murders.

Towards the end, it does rather begin to resemble a 1970s Doctor Who serial - a double-cross at every turn and a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter. A little over-wrought, perhaps, but wrapped in such a great story that it is easy to forgive.

…And that's a wrap! Now eagerly awaiting my next holiday - do let me know your recommendations.

I often wonder how much I read during the average day. A few thousand words of tweets, couple of hundred in Facebook posts, a dozen articles on blogs and news sites - and an unhealthy smattering of Reddit and other fora. All told, I am probably reading the equivalent of half a novel per day.

And yet... it doesn't feel like I'm doing proper reading. I don't get my teeth stuck into a single subject or story, it always feels like I'm flitting from one thing to the next without ever really examining it in detail. I don't know if this lack of focus has a detrimental effect on my ability to focus on a single task - but it seems unhealthy. Like mindlessly gobbling down a tube of Pringles, I often find myself reading my phone or laptop without any real comprehension of whether I'm enjoying the words I'm seeing.

So, for a week long holiday in the Bahamas, I went on a digital detox. No phone, no Internet, no news, blogs, tweets, or texts - just me and a Nook stuffed with books. Oh, I took my wife along too - well, I needed someone with whom I could discuss literature!

It was like slaking a thirst I never knew I had! I averaged around two books per day - I'd have got through more, but the early morning cocktails make it somewhat hard to concentrate on the written word. Herein you can find a brief synopsis of what I read, in the order I read them, and how enjoyable they were. I tend to alternate between fiction and non-fiction, with a bias to modern books and autobiographies.

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) - Felicia Day

A gentle start - an almost perfect aeroplane read. That's not a criticism! Felicia Day's delightful clarity of style is particularly refreshing. She tells the somewhat unlikely tale of her rise to Internet Stardom - via the pain of growing up nerdy. For a celebrity autobiography, it's honest about the darker times in her life without every straying into the "Mommie Dearest" melodrama.

There are two, I felt, curious omissions. For someone who has worked with all sorts of interesting people - there are very few "behind the curtain" stories. I'm not talking about how Joss Whedon is an abusive megolomaniac, or how the actor playing Tinkerballa would only eat blue M&Ms - but just the sort of fun details about working on other hit shows. I'm aware that celeb biogs can often turn into "and then I worked with Larry, who is such a love!" - and I certainly don't begrudge her right to privacy - but it seemed like a curious omission. So too does the exclusion of how she met her partner. Again, this is her story and she gets to protect her personal life with as much vigour as she likes - but after several chapters of how she was a social outcast, it feels a little odd to just drop in her partner without even a good "and that's how we met" story.

Still, all that said, it's a cracking look at how web-scale products work, what it's like to be part of a runaway success, and the downside of meeting people AFK.

How to Be a Husband - Tim Downling

I really don't know what lead me to pick this one up - I've never read one of Tim's columns in The Guardian. Again, an excellent plane read. A light and witty look at (fairly) modern marriage is like.

I found the sequences talking about fatherhood a bit wearying, but I guess that's more of a reflection on my distaste of procreation rather than the author's talents.

It's slightly derivative of Mil Millington's Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, but it was funny enough to away from the in-flight movies.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed - Jon Ronson

A fairly short work, but interesting nonetheless. It looks at the aftermath of Internet Hate Mobs - what happens when real people get caught in a scandal which ignites social media? It relies heavily on in-person interviews rather than rampant speculation. The cast of characters ranges from the sympathetic people caught up in a whirlwind, to the downright unrepentant who have heaped tragedy upon themselves.

It strikes me that there still is a need for mob justice. Our legal system cannot keep up with new social mores and often leaves people feeling inadequately served by the paltry justice it metes out. I'm not saying that it's right to launch a crusade against someone who thought they were making a private remark - but it is a natural consequence of our disenchantment with societal institutions.

One thing to note is that this book has been heavily trailed and syndicated in the media. I'd read several of the chapters before getting the book, which somewhat diminishes it.

News from the Clouds - Robert Llewellyn

The bloke who plays Kryten has written an epic sci-fi trilogy, all made possible through the Unbound Crowdfunding site for authors.

The series is designed to be a positive spin on the future. What if, instead of destroying the planet and filling it with killer robots, we make a better society? What starts off as a hippy-dippy look at the world slowly becomes darker and more engrossing.

The protagonist has a dispiriting tendency towards the obtuse, which helpfully allows the other charters a chance to engage in plot-hole-filling exposition - and to the self-critical, which makes him somewhat of an unsympathetic narrator. That said, it's a jolly good romp through the clouds, looking at the different directions in which society could develop. Well worth a read if you like your sci-fi meaningful and homespun.

Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference - William MacAskill

This book asks one very important questions - how can you best make a difference to the world? It looks at the effectiveness of charitable giving and whether it is sensible to devote one's life to working for good causes.

Much like books by Malcom Gladwell, Atul Gawande, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb - this is a very short book padded out with annecdata.

The two core ideas are fantastic:

1. Check that the money you are donating is being used wisely.
2. It may be worth donating your career rather than your earnings.

That's it! The book spends a bit too much time promoting 80,000 Hours - the charity the author has set up and too little time talking about how one can accurately assess which charities are worthwhile. Despite being a UK charity, the case studies seem biased towards American projects.

This is a vital and important book - and it has made me reassess which charities I support - I just wish it had a bit more substance to it.

Armada - Ernest Cline

Oh! But this book is ridiculously campy fun! After the success of Ready Player One, it's a shorter and simpler tale - less impressive in its majesty, but just as exciting.

The plot is... well... it's hard to call it unoriginal because it relies heavily on the reader understanding the homages to great (and terrible) sci-fis of yesteryear.

I'll admit that the plot didn't move in the direction I expected which, given the paper thin characters, reflects rather poorly on me!

This is a boys-own-adventure (two whole women!) of pure escapism. Given the upcoming film adaptation of his first novel, this reads like it has half an eye on a TV-series. No, scratch that, it kinda reads like the tie-in novelization of a show that Fox cancelled prematurely!

Fast, silly, fun.

A Book for Her - Bridget Christie

What is this "feminism" nonsense all the girls are going on about, eh? Is it just bra-burning and shouting at people on Twitter?

This is by turns a hilarious and depressing book. Part comedienne's autobiography, part tale of consciousness raising, part history of modern feminism. It's a delicious ramble through the thickets of a lady-comic's travails - "ramble" being the operative word as she employs the same "anti-comedy" repetition made popular by TV's Richard Herring and Stewart Lee. It works slightly better on stage with the helpless chuckling of a crowd surrounding you, but she genuinely caused me to guffaw into my daiquiri.

If you haven't seen Bridgit Christie on stage, you should check your privilege and rectify the situation immediately!

The Shepherd's Crown (Discworld Novels) - Terry Pratchett

The book I was dreading. I saved it until halfway through the holiday. Once read, that's it; no more Discworld. Wailey! Wailey!

Really, all that can be said is that this is an exemplary Discworld novel. The complicated side-plots so reminiscent of his middle-era are kept to a minimum, the wit is just as brutal, and the world-building mythos is superbly handled. This is the most emotionally complex of his works, utterly devastating and hilarious.

It starts with an emotional sucker-punch and gradually absorbed me back into a world I've known since childhood. Spat out at the other end, I felt rather relieved that it lived up to expectations. It gladly joins the others on my shelf.

Ayoade on Ayoade - Richard Ayoade Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich, malkovich? Malkovich malkovich malkovich - malkovich-malkovich!

It's hard* to know how to assess** a book*** like this. It's far too clever for its own good - a frustrating and humorous look at... what? It's neither autobiography nor comic novel. An anti-novel**** which trudges the reader through a series of comic vignettes. It reminded me of some of Woody Allen's work. If you get the joke - you'll find it hilarious. Everyone else will just look on in bemusement.

Funny in places, bewildering throughout, and makes judicious use of footnotes with almost the same skill as Terry Pratchett*****.

*But not too hard

** If we can ever really assess anything

*** When all is said and done, what is a book? Merely a bagatelle of dreams in which we sometimes catch a reflection of our nightmares.

**** Or "antinovel" if you will

***** Indeed, Ayoade makes frequent reference to the Discworld in a pamphlet he published in 2004 entitled "Wither Soup"

The Martian - Andy Weir

I asked my friends for funny books to keep me entertained on holiday, Thayer recommended this one. Frankly, it all sounded a bit depressing - an astronaut is abandoned on Mars, left for dead he unexpectedly survives - but no one knows he is alive. Grim, right?

Not a bit of it! It is consistently funny, utterly tense, and a good smattering of real science and maths in there.

It also fails the Bechdel-Wallace Test in an interesting new way! While there are strong female characters all everyone talks about is this one guy :-)

I can see why it has been made into a movie - I stayed up all night, fighting jetlag, just to finish it.

Robin Ince's Bad Book Club: One man's quest to uncover the books that taste forgot

Comedian Robin Ince has a problem. Like many readers, he can't walk past a charity shop without poking his nose in for a quick rummage. Sadly, Robin has become addicted to "bad" books. Not just poorly written, but badly conceived, and of rare ineptitude.

This is a series of delightfully snarky reviews of some of the dreadful genres of books (Christian Gynaecologist Romance! Killer Crabs! Faded Celebrity Autobiographies!) It never ventures into being mean-spirited, in fact it positively revels in the joy of finding new depths of crimes against literature.

Not a long book, but good for a holiday read.

The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu

This won the Hugo Award and deservedly so. The translator adds several footnotes to help readers unfamiliar to Chinese history understand the context of the novel. Particularly interesting is this, from the Translator's Postscript:

The best translations into English do not, in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture’s patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language’s rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another people’s gestures and movements.

Ken Liu

That's one of the aspects which make this such a compelling novel. The sci-fi is hard - space, aliens, gravity, maths - but much of the "other-worldliness" comes from (human) protagonists.

There's a little too much monologuing for my liking - with side characters taking the time to pontificate on the ramifications of the plot - but it all hangs together well. The pace drives along the action without every sacrificing the reader's understanding.

The first part of a trilogy - I'm impatient for the next two episodes!

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life - David Mitchell

This is little more than a rehash of David's columns for The Guardian.

They're... fine, I guess. A lot of his humour works best as a spoken rant. Parts are genuinely funny - but the righteous indignation works best as an occasional treat. Reading page after page begins to feel like hard work.

One to dip into now and again - but a bit of a slog for a pool-side read.

China in Ten Words - Yu Hua

Back to China again! Acclaimed novelist Yu Hua writes a biography of himself and modern China.

A book such as this can only thinly penetrate the rise of the Middle Kingdom to global prominence. It's a moving story of an individual trying to navigate the aftermath of Mao's Cultural Revolution and find a position for themselves.

It occasionally feels like it trivialises the oppression and brutalisation which occurred in society - and it is surprisingly uncritical of the way in which China has developed, despite acknowledging its limitations.

It is a lyrical and poetic look at China - admittedly only through the eyes of one man - which vividly illustrates why and how it became such a force in the modern world.

The Blind Giant: How to Survive in the Digital Age - Nick Harkaway

Can you steal a book you were given for free? At some Google event I was given a promotional copy after seeing the author chair a panel. I didn't want to take the hardback in my suitcase, so I "procured" a eBook copy from a dodgy torrent site. Is that moral? Is it legal? Is it the normal way of doing things in the future?

The Blind Giant covers all these points and more. It is a guidebook to the future - if you've been digitally connected since childhood, there's a good chance parts of this book are redundant. That said, it's always good to be reminded of how others see and experience the new economy.

Although published in 2013 (an age in 'net time) it is still relevant. Most importantly, it challenges us to think about the future with an eye for social norms. We shouldn't wait until we have robot/brain interfaces, we need to start shaping society and laws to cope with them. In many ways, this is happening with "driverless" vehicles - laws are being drafted for their inevitable arrival and, hopefully, those employed as drivers are looking for ways to diversify.

The book is written in a fairly academic style - and isn't best suited for an 8 hour transatlantic flight - but it does an admirable job of stimulating thoughts about what challenges netizens will face in the coming years.

In the introduction, Nick points out the folly of predictions -

More generally: it is inevitable that I will be wrong about any number of predictions. No book which tries to see the present and anticipate the future can be both interesting and consistently right. I can only hope to be wrong in interesting ways.

He was more right than he knew! The book is resplendent with links to social objects:

Throughout The Blind Giant, you will find printed hypertext links ... If you click on these links or type them into your web browser, you will find yourself at the book’s website, where you can share a fragment of the text with friends ... Thoughts on paper are fixed, but the world moves on.

Sadly, many of the links are now dead. Sic transit gloria electricus!

And I'm done! 15 books in just over a week - I feel more relaxed than ever and grateful that I'm still able to read novels when I'm not distracted by Twitter. I can't wait for my next holiday!

Amazingly, given the choice, some people decided to throw a couple of quid my way! Once I saw that people were retweeting me, I rushed over to the Amazon stats page to see how I was doing.

Holy cow! Not only had I actually sold some copies, but it was enough to propel me to the top 10 of several best seller lists!

At one stage, I checked the "Graphic Novels - Fantasy Section" and the only thing keeping me off the number one spot was Neil Gaiman's Sandman...

Rich! Rich beyond the dreams of avarice! Well, not quite.

I checked the Kindle self-publishing stats:

Four. I'd sold four books in the UK - and one in the USA. I'm not sure how quickly the stats update, but 24 hours later I'd still only sold a grand total of five books in the UK.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Although the 35% royalties which Amazon pay won't make me a millionaire soon, it's still better than nothing.

It does make me wonder about how easy it is to abuse the "Best Selling Author" tag. I can now quite legitimately state that I've released a best selling graphic novel which was second only in popularity to "Sandman".

Part of the problem is that Amazon has incredibly fine-grained categorisation. Amazon divides books up into 23 main categories, then sub-divides each into around 12 more sub-categories, some of which are further split. So one can place a book in "Books > Nonfiction > Arts & Entertainment > Art > Painting" and become top of the best seller list without too much competition.

Indeed, it's possible for an author to submit their work into two different categories - handy to help customers find your work, and useful if you crave the almost-meaningless status of "best selling" author.

What Does It All Mean?

Top 10 lists are often used as a shortcut for purchasing decisions. Suppose I want to buy a digital camera. I can read all the reviews, try to find one to test drive, ask my friends or - simply - go to the list of best selling Digital SLR cameras. How many units has the number one camera sold?

Are you trusting your purchase decision on a list which it is ridiculously easy to game?

"Top Ten Author" and "Best Selling Book" are now meaningless - much like "As Seen On TV". A heuristic for quality which is no longer valid.

If you'd like to help propel me to the top of the best seller list, and unseat Neil Gaiman from his throne, the book is available through Amazon in the following countries:

• Amazon UK
• Amazon US
• Amazon Canada
• Amazon France
• Amazon Germany
• Amazon Italy
• Amazon Spain
• Amazon Japan
• Amazon India
• Amazon Brazil

Yesterday, I received this delightful email from the publishers Simon and Schuster.

NEW book by the "Prophet of Silicon Valley", Jaron Lanier, available for your review!

Dear Mr. Vogels,

I'm writing today to let you know of a new book from Simon & Schuster that I think your readers will be interested in — WHO OWNS THE FUTURE? By Jaron Lanier (available 5/7/13).

Jaron Lanier is the bestselling author of You Are Not a Gadget, the father of virtual reality, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time.

[Snip a load of marketing fluff]

I'd like to send you a copy of the book to review.

Well, let's ignore the fact that I am not "Mr Vogels". PR is a hard job and getting people's names right isn't a fundamental part of relationship building.

So, as the book sounded interesting, I asked to be emailed a copy.

I'm happy to send you a hardcover copy. If you might provide a mailing address, I'll put one in the mail today.

As regular readers know, last year I burned all my paper books and switched exclusively to ebooks. I related that fact, and mentioned that it would be much quicker than international shipping - surely a priority if you want advanced reviews.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to send ebooks as review copies at this time. Many thanks for your interest.

So, the "Prophet of Silicon Valley" wants his words stamped on to bits of dead tree, then air shipped at great expense across the Atlantic - as opposed to emailing me a few MB?

How very futuristic.

Don't Copy That Floppy!

I don't know if this is Simon and Schuster police on ebooks - or Jaron Lanier's. Given Jaron's stance on DRM and his publisher's ongoing DRM law-suit it could be either.

What I do know is this:

• Regional release dates are antithetical to the Internet. The UK edition of "Who Owns The Future" went on sale in the UK on 7th March - it goes on sale on May 7 in the US/Canada and May 22 in Australia/NZ
• 1 minute of Googling found an eBook copy, without DRM, nestling on a Russian server. Along with the usual polarity of Magnet links.

It just goes to show, even the most influential futurist, and his publishers, are still struggling with the reality of the Internet and the ongoing eBook revolution.

The book certainly sound very interesting. To quote from the preface:

The very action of reading makes you the hero of the story I am telling. Maybe you bought, or stole, a physical copy, paid to read this on your tablet, or pirated a digital copy off a share site. Whatever the prequel, here you are, living precisely the circumstances described in this book.

If you paid to read this, thank you! This book is a result of living my life as I do, which I hope provides value to you. The hope of this book is that someday we’ll all have more ways to grow wealth as a side effect of living our lives creatively and intelligently, with an eye to doing things of use to others.

If you paid to read, then there has been a one-way transaction, in which you transferred money to someone else.

If you got it for free, there has been a no-way transaction, and any value traded will be off the books, recorded not in any ledger but rather in the informal value systems of reputation, karma, or other wispy forms of barter. That doesn’t mean nothing has happened. Maybe you’ll get some positive strokes over a social network because of what you say about the book. That sort of activity might benefit us both. But it’s a kind of benefit that is unreliable and perishable.

"Who Owns The Future?" is available from all good book stores, as both a hardback or eBook. Jaron Lanier would probably prefer you buy it, but is probably equally wary of your personal details ending up in a mega data warehouse.

I walked through the extensive computer section of the library. Dozens of computers with free Internet access. While a few people were on Wikipedia, or checking out the library catalogue, the majority seemed to be playing free flash games on the web.

For a moment, I struggled to contain my rage. My inner-Tory spluttered invectives about how the workshy were wasting hard-pressed taxpayers money. Rather than improving themselves by looking for work, or getting an education, or writing a novel - they were frittering their time on "Bubble Smash" and "Tetris Extreme".

Disgusted, I turned away, as saw a young man lounging on a chair, a copy of The Colour of Magic grasped in his hands. My brain calmed down. Here, at least, was someone using their mind.

Then it struck me as to what a total arse I was. I have no idea how these people spend their time. I certainly enjoy farting around on Facebook after a long day's work - why shouldn't they? I sit on the tube playing Angry Birds - I don't cure cancer; so who am I to go around judging people?

It boils down to this.

Is playing a video game somehow worse than reading a work of fiction?

It feels wrong, but I can't put my finger on it. A game like Portal has a story as good as any you'll find in the sci-fi section of the library. Playing scrabble with friends in a far away lands is no less genteel than playing it after a dinner party. LittleBigMansion will test your logic and reasoning skills as much as any detective novel.

The library loans out works of fiction - both written and in video form. They used to rent out video games, but they were often stolen. So why not allow people to play games on the library computers?

None. There is no difference. Video games are as culturally relevant as any other work of art. Relaxing with a good book is, if anything, a far ore passive and didactic experience than playing a game.

Regardless of that, it's not up to me to dictate how people spend their leisure time. It's very easy to see a snapshot of someone's life and extrapolate all sorts of misinformed ideas about them.

I glanced above the heads of some of the people furiously alt-tabbing between games and emails and saw this poster. The proper use of a library is a space where people can feel safe and enjoy free access to culture.

This is a long and rambling blog post which asks two questions:

1. Given that we can only read one book at a time - can we set up a "Kindle Stock Exchange" for our unused media?
2. If so, what effect would this have on content producers and sellers who rely on artificial scarcity?

This has been mulling over in my head for some time.

Image from FreeFoto.com

Transactional Friction

One of the great advantages of the digital era is the reduction of transactional friction.

The time, effort and money it takes to perform a transaction in the online world is radically reduced from that of the physical world. Sending a letter to the other side of the world used to take weeks - and involved ships, planes, and physical delivery. Now a click of the mouse sends it anywhere in an instant.

Neal Stephenson's novels in the Baroque Cycle document the rise of the bank note. It used to be common practice for wealthy people to lug their gold with them when they went on journeys. This was, as you can imagine, a highly inefficient practice - it was slow, dangerous, and expensive. The bank note reduced the friction of having to physically transport gold.

The efficiency of being able to settle large debts without the need to physically move goods was a revolution which introduced the free movement of capital, and dramatically altered the nature of debt and lending. It shaped the modern world.

The digital world can also free us from the needs of the physical. While many of us already have some goods that only exist as 1s and 0s on disk - some pioneers have already shifted as many of their possessions as possible away from the physical world. They've turned their heavy, impractical, and inefficient gold into a light, practical and frictionless bank note. A lifetime of books, films and music - stored on a lightweight thumb drive. Or floating weightless on the Internet.

That's why, last year, I decided to burn all my books.

Making Money

Here's a picture of my book shelf. At any moment, I can only read one book at a time, watch one DVD, and listen to one CD.

Would it make sense to sell all the books and DVDs I owned except for the one I was currently using? When it comes to physical books - no.

It would be so inefficient. It takes too much time, money, and effort to sell a single book than the value I would recoup from doing so. Sticking a book on eBay, postage, packing, dealing with refunds etc. is a lot of effort for relatively small gain.

The digital world changes all of that. While the ability to instantly consume is exciting, what intrigues me is the ability to take my goods to market - and the consequences that would have on capitalism.

What would happen when - rather than buying books instantly - I can offer them for sale instantly?

Selling My Bookshelf

Imagine if you could easily rent out your DVDs - like a mini-BlockBuster. They're sat unused on the shelf all night, ignored while you're at work during the day, left unplayed when you go shopping.

The hyper-efficient online world makes this possible.

Just like taking a loan secured on my assets (car, house), I can release equity from my digital goods by selling them when I'm not using them. Which is most of the time.

99% of the time, your DVD collection isn't in use. You may share them with your family, friends, and co-workers - why wouldn't you share them with everyone?

There are some very good reasons why not in the physical world - access, lack of selection in your collection, wear and tear - but in the frictionless online marketplace, most of these concerns disappear.

Just as on eBay, your single DVD sits on the same shelf as someone selling thousands of DVDs. The buyer probably doesn't care about range of selection or the providence of a seller - she just wants the item she desires.

With digital copies there are no issues of wear and tear and an online copy of a work is instantly accessible.

A second hand digital work is identical in quality to a factory fresh copy. My ebook edition of Little Brother is bit-for-bit identical to one bought anywhere. In a perfect market, it would fetch the same price as one purchased from a retailer. Or, more likely, the retailer would reduce the price to the lowest available on the market.

(This leads us down an interesting path. The whole notion of "second hand" or "used" goods disappears when we're talking about digital copies. But that's for another post.)

Real Time Trading

We can even go a step further. Stock trading used to be conducted by sweaty men shouting in arenas. There are now electronic agents on the the stock exchange which process millions of trades per second. Every millisecond the computers execute trades based on real-time information.

I've said previously that you can only read one book at a time. Your eBook reader will only display one page at a time - so why not sell the pages that you aren't reading? In the physical world, perhaps two people can read a book at the same time (if they're close and not overly annoyed with the other's reading speed). In the digital world, you could have one reader for every page in the book.

The second you click "Next Page" your eBook reader could instantly find the cheapest price for the page you want to read - and sell the pages you're not reading for the best price.

A DVD could be separated into scenes or - to push it to the extreme - individual frames. If I sell my movies when I'm not watching them - why shouldn't I lend or sell them while I am watching them?

The Effect

Moving from transporting gold to transporting bank notes to digital trading has radically changed the nature of money and banking. The free movement of capital completely disrupted the way the world works. The free market dominates economic thought. But it is only a free market between giant players. Only corporations can afford to play capitalism's game.

Will the free market be brought down to individuals? Will a grandmother in her living room be able to sell her digital goods as easily and freely as Warner Brothers?

What does the media publishing landscape look like when every consumer can change their bookshelf into a second hand store? Why would anyone buy a copy of a work from Amazon when they could borrow from their neighbour - even if that neighbour lived on the other side of the world?

Would we see multiple Bourse to facilitate the exchange and a willingness for people to sweat their assets?

Perhaps it will move us to "subscription" models for mixed media - taking a £50 per month subscription to books in the same way many of us do for television channels.

What does it even mean to sell goods when they can be replicated instantly at zero cost?

I don't know - but I think it will be exciting to witness.

There Is An Analogue Hole In Your Mind

Applying analogue thinking to the digital world leads us down some interesting rabbit holes. As a thought-experiment, it's incredible to imagine that we could end up in a crazy world where we pay-per-word, where the right to read is predicated on software stock brokers trying to extract every micro-cent of value out of copyrighted works.

We need to break out of our old ways of thinking. The zero-friction economy is a paradigm shift (in the sense of Kuhn). We need to adapt our modes of thinking and our economies to this brave new world.

My bookshelves used to burst at the seams. Every individual shelf bowed violently from the over-stuffed mass of paperbacks squeezed onto it. Shakespeare rubbed up with Straczinsky. A complete set of Terry Pratchett was enviously glowered at by a patchy Enid Blyton collection. Half-read oddities nestled with well worn volumes. A copy of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" which taught me how to read as a child occupying the same shelf as the a Camille Paglia book purchased solely to make me look intellectual. I somehow acquired two copies of Machiavelli's "The Prince". What I want to convey to you is that I have a deep and abiding love for books. That is why I must burn them.

Every time I find an ebook copy of a book I have on my shelf, the ebook version is downloaded - redundantly backed up - and placed in my Calibre library. The physical book is burned.

Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not engaging in a Fahrenheit 451 orgy of destruction. Each physical book is carefully checked and then given to a charity shop so it can be enjoyed anew by someone else. I'm not a monster! I even gift-aid my donations.

But, for a while, it felt like I was doing something terrible. Destroying or disrespecting books is a secular sin - that's what comes of having an English teacher for a parent. I'm trying to be a hip, 21st century guy and live digitally - but I have a heap of 20th century baggage (and a bunch of monkey-brained concepts) which are hard to let go of.

Having physical stuff feels good. Ultimately though, digital stuff is better. More convenient, easier to save in case of a fire, more useful, and takes up less space. I'm doing to my books what I did to my CDs - going 100% digital.

But What About The Smell Of Books?

Throughout the web, you'll see people saying "Oh! But reading an ebook doesn't feel the same! You don't get same smell as old books! They're cold and soulless."

This is nonsense. Find an ebook copy of the book you loved as a child. After a minute, you'll be right inside Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory and won't care whether the words are on eink or written on papyrus.

CDs are better at reproducing music than vinyl records ever were. DVDs are better than VHS. Ebooks are better than physical books. They contain the same words, the same stories and ideas, they entertain and delight in exactly the same way.

And now, I can carry my whole library with me wherever I go.

What Is A Library For?

Libraries have many ancillary functions that they've developed over the years. At their core, they are no more than a semi-convenient warehouse for books.

I asked my local library how many books they had - this was their response.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @SurreyLibraries@SurreyLibraries hi, do you know how many books are in the Surrey Library system? Or how many physical books a library like Woking has?

---

Surrey Libraries UK

@SurreyLibraries

Replying to @edent@edent Hi - at the end of last year we had 1,708,142 books in stock (Surrey Libraries) Woking Library had 74,805.

---

(I assume that's physical volumes rather than distinct titles as they have duplicate copies of popular books.)

How Many Books Could a Bookchuck Chuck?

Could I carry on my Kindle every single book that my local library holds?

Ebooks come in various file sizes. A typical novel weighs in at under 500KB. An illustrated book is typically under 3MB. A comic - or other work with a large quantity of images - could be over 100MB.

Judging from my collection, the average ebook file is around 1MB. Which is rather convenient for our calculations.

Woking Library has 74,805 books. At 1MB each - that's 73GB of files.

Buying a 75GB hard disk today is almost impossible. The smallest size readily available is 1TB. That's 1024GB. Or, enough to hold 1,048,576 typical ebook. Slightly shy of the total number of books held by all the libraries in the county.

Total cost for a 1TB external hard drive? Around £60. Less than the price of a couple of cheap bookshelves.

If you wanted to carry the books on a MicroSD card - suitable for a nook or other ereader - then a 32GB card will set you back £30. You could carry around 90,000 ebooks with you for less than £100.

Realistically, though, how many books can you read in your lifetime? Even on holiday with nothing to do but laze on a beach and read - I manage about one book per day.

Were I to live to 100 years of age, and read one book per day, every day. I would barely be able to fill a single 32GB MicroSD card.

Everything I've ever read could fit on one of these.

What's My Point?

I have none. Thank you for reading anyway.