Winter 2024 to Spring 2025 Reading List

It has been far too long time since my last book-blog at the end of November.

It feels even longer--as if my last posts was from a different age.

I have been putting it off. Not only have I done a poor job at finishing books that I started, but many of the books have become unreadable because they hit too close to home. (You'll see why in the titles below.)

Unconsciously, I was probably dreading writing these words now.

The rapid changes in the last 6 months are too much too comprehend, let along chronicle. We are barely 3 months into "flooding the zone." Unreal.

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

For the first time in my life I have been politically active beyond casting my vote or contributing to a campaign.

Things are changing personally, professionally, and politically. I have not yet done the performative LinkedIn post on a job change and I have not yet decided if I will.

I'll be making a move. From the beginning, I had a feeling the job I still held was a transitional. I was not wrong. I do not regret joining a Canadian startup and enjoyed my 4 (or was it five) border crossings during the old world order.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

America is changing. I am changing. I'm now well into the age of AARP mailers, when you are no longer angry about them. And starting to worry about health issues when you are actually still quite healthy. When you get things removed from your body that leave scars, so you don't have to worry about them. Yet, you still worry.

This is truly an anxious age. Anxiety accumulates over time.

Last fall, I looked at my social security contributions and my 401k and started envisioning what it might be like to work part time.

Not so fast.

But my personal and professional learning since December has not slowed down. It cannot. Just as it was when I started my tech career late, before the DotCom boom (and bust) it is a race to keep up.

To learn and keep learning. Keep that monkey off you back. When I was younger it was my lack of relevant experience and non-technical degree. Now it is because I am overqualified (and have been overcompensated) for so many roles.

In fact, it has sped up.

I have done more Python development in the last 90 days than I had done in the last decade. I have leveled up my SQL skills and learned to love ClickHouse, while keeping my Kubernetes and Elasticsearch knowledge fresh.

I've tried to keep up with the ongoing releases of Open Source models and agentic frameworks, yet I'm no Vibe Coder. I detest it. It is exhausting.

But at least I have clarity. I've decided once and for all I'm on the IC track. I will be getting back to 2020 salary levels in a month. Having just done my taxes (and downloaded by Social Security Contributions), my income peaked in 2023 and it will likely not return.

Right on time for my age.

I'm fine with that, because there are more important things at stake in this moment.

Authoritarianism and its Discontents

• Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 by Ramachandra Guha (2018)
• Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World by Anne Applebaum (2024)
• Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 by Thomas E. Ricks (2023)
• Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2021)

Memoir

• Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (2021)
• China Marine by E. B. Sledge, Stephen Ambrose, Joseph Alexander (2010)
• A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2023)

Business

• This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life - by Seth Godin (2024)

History

• The Geographies of War by Jeremy Black (2024)
• Tank Warfare by Jeremy Black (2021)
• Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson (2024)