User Profile

Anders

aaspnas@kirja.casa

Joined 1 year, 6 months ago

Reading books of various genres, mostly Nordic Crime, Information Technology, Science and Fiction, Science and whatever I happen to find. I like to read mostly from paper, either pocket or hard cover, but also occasionally finish reading an e-book. I read books in Swedish, Finnish, English and German depending on what is available.

My reading history is available over at Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/user/show/76763164-anders

I work as a Technical Architect in a large Information Technology corporation and live in Turku, Finland.

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Anders's books

To Read

Currently Reading

2024 Reading Goal

53% complete! Anders has read 16 of 30 books.

Neal Ford, Pramod Sadalage, Mark Richards, Zhamak Dehghani: Software Architecture : the Hard Parts (2021, O'Reilly Media, Incorporated) 4 stars

There are no easy decisions in software architecture. Instead, there are many hard parts--difficult problems …

Great book to learn about IT architecture tradeoff

4 stars

Bought this book in a Humble Bundle architecture pack. I have been reading it on my phone as an EPUB while waiting and being somewhere away from my other books.

The content is what it is, mostly somewhat irritatingly familiar and self evident, some places interesting and quite innovative and excellent at other locations. As the book is. related to what I do for work I can not say that it is the most interesting or rewarding, but perhaps useful would be something I could settle for.

One gem is the rant at the end of the book about avoiding selling snake oil and evangelizing technologies. Everything can be made to fit anywhere, but there are constant issues with applying technology and products. Under some conditions the issues can be smaller, while at other times the consequences can be severe. Enthusiasm is understandable, but enhancing the benefits easily leads to …

reviewed Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree (Legends & Lattes, #0)

Travis Baldree: Bookshops & Bonedust (Hardcover, 2023, Pan Macmillan) 5 stars

Viv’s career with the renowned mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during …

Great adventure story

5 stars

I still do not normally read fantasy adventure stories but both of Baldree's books are very good, humane and cozy to read. I would highly recommend this book to everyone.

Joseph Weizenbaum: Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation (1976) 4 stars

Still relevant classic text on artificial Intelligence

4 stars

The hype around artificial intelligence feels new, but the history of AI goes back to the middle of the 20 century. This book written and published in 1976 have lots of things to say about what AI can do, what the risks are and how we misinterpret what computers over all are capable of doing.

Although there has been a lot of development in the technology around AI the book is still worth reading, especially if you are fed up with the endless claims of beneficial AI futures.

Betty Edwards: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (en language, 1999, JT Tarcher) 4 stars

When Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was first published in 1979, it …

Long read including drawing excersises

4 stars

Reading this book included more work than what I expected when I started. This book is not one that you just simply read cover to cover. There are a lot of exercises that readers will have to spend time on to get the full value of what the book has to offer.

The instruction in the book is clear and well written. The book claims that anybody can become better at drawing, and I would agree, as it seems to work for me. It explains how to learn to observe and see in a way that facilitates drawing.

A large part of the book is about finding the right state of mind, which is perhaps what I appreciated the most, as I could be described as more analytical than absorbed into artistry. I'm not sure how much this has actually to do with the human brain and its two halves, …

Sean Carroll: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe 1 (2023, Oneworld Publications) 4 stars

Mathematical model of space, time and motion

4 stars

Not the easiest book to read, but makes complicated concepts possible to understand, after rereading the more difficult sections a couple of times.

The book require some concentration, so not something that I would recommend for everyone, but if you are sufficiently interested in knowing the mathematics behind our everyday physics I can recommend it.

Noson S. Yanofsky: The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us (2013) 4 stars

What we know, and what we can't know

4 stars

This was a tough book to read on what I thought would be an interesting subject when I bought the book.

The book discuss subjects like paradoxes, mathematics and computation and their intersection with philosophy and outlines the borders where the known ends and uncertainty takes over.

As such it is a book I would recommend to anyone in science, as well as anyone in technology, especially in over hyped areas like artificial intelligence.

reviewed Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree (Legends & Lattes, #1)

Travis Baldree: Legends & Lattes (Paperback, 2022, Tor Books) 5 stars

Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes …

Surprisingly positive experience

5 stars

I do not read all that much fantasy, and I did not expect all that much, but this book provided a surprisingly pleasant reading experience.

Breaking free of old habits, friendship, opportunities and coffee are things most of us can relate to. Hence I would recommend this book to everybody, with a good cup of coffee on the side. I might even read this book again.

Ari Ezra Waldman: Industry Unbound (2021, University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations) 5 stars

Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech industry conducts its ongoing crusade to undermine …

Very impressive investigation

5 stars

This book presents an impressive investigation and analysis of the world of compliance focusing on privacy. While the book is about privacy you can extrapolate the problems it presents to other areas like diversity, security and equality. The appendix presents the multifaceted methodology and the challenges investigation this field has. The book has extensive notes that provides additional reading for those interested.

As for the results with the quite depressing conclusion the book paints a picture where people are hired as compliance agents to do a job that the company does not appreciate and interacts with people who would rather be left alone. For corporations presenting the image of caring about privacy seems to be sufficient. It also explains why the world of privacy in corporations is as bad as it seems with extractive practices running wild.

The book is somewhat similar to books like Sidney Dekkers Compliance capitalism and …

Corinne Cath: Eaten by the Internet 4 stars

We are living a unique moment: internet technologies are the default infrastructure for society, not …

Collection of essays

4 stars

This is a wide ranging collection of essays about the internet. The essays highlight various aspects of political power and social structure that shape internet today.

It is a short book, well worth reading for anyone, specially those who wish to understand internet culture of today.

Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas: Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java with JUnit (2004, The Pragmatic Programmer, LLC) 3 stars

For reference more than for the fun of reading.

3 stars

This was a work related book, not very long, not too out of date and not all that interesting in the end. There are lots to learn in this book, even for the experienced Java developer, but as that is just a very minor part of what I do for work and not all that practical at the moment. I would recommend this more like a reference book for developers, to read once and refer back to later when you need to code and write tests.

As a side note I read this book on my phone, with a small screen and in EPUB format. The normal text was readable but the code sections given as examples was quite unreadable and difficult to make sense of. You would hope that the EPUB format and layout would improve to better handle code samples and images. But I used what I had …