I was pleased to get sent a copy of Benjamin Nevarez’s new book High Performance SQL Server. I’ve known Benjamin for a long time. He’s a very skilled SQL Server professional, and you’ll see him at conferences around the world. (Or at least once Covid is tackled more completely).
And the technical reviewer for the book is another very skilled old friend in Mark Broadbent. So my expectations were high for the new edition of this book.
2021-02-26
Richard Dawkins is a controversial figure. I’ve got some mixed opinions on him. On one hand, I suspect that in a hundred year’s time, The God Delusion will be regarded as a seminal piece of writing. On the other hand, I’ve seen how some of my religious friends find him abrasive. Most of the time when I see this though, what I suspect much of the criticism of him comes from, is that people just don’t like having their long term beliefs challenged. (They would also say, at times, ridiculed). That’s not surprising. Other times though, even his supporters think he gets too strident in what he says and how he describes things.
2021-02-24
I’ve mentioned before that I have a deep interest in artificial intelligence and how it will change the world. In particular, I’m interested in the effects on jobs. So I was pleased to get to listen to another book covering this recently. It was Kevin Scott (from Microsoft)’s Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley - Making AI Serve Us All.
Kevin is Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, so I’ve come across him before. Prior to Microsoft, he was a senior vice president at LinkedIn and came across to Microsoft as part of the LinkedIn purchase.
2021-02-17
I have a deep interest in artificial intelligence and how it will change the world. I regularly present sessions on what I see coming, technology-wise. Many examples in those sessions are based on breakthroughs related to medicine. So I was pleased to get to listen to Eric Topol’s book Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again.
Eric spends time discussing how much of existing medicine is functional yet quite broken. Very few doctors now really connect with and relate to their patients. Worse, misdiagnoses are becoming far too frequent, arguably because of this disconnection.
2021-02-03
Another book that I listened to recently, also fits into the “I nearly didn’t get past the first chapter” category. It was Atomic Habits by James Clear. By the end of this book though, I realised just how much I’d enjoyed it.
James makes a really interesting study into habits. Far more than anything I’d ever read before.
He makes it so clear how the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions leads to profound life changes. That was already pretty obvious to me but I loved the way he made this so practical. He calls the habits that are formed Atomic Habits.
2021-01-28
I haven’t posted any book reviews lately but I have been getting through quite a few books, so it’s time to rectify that. First up is Gary Vee’s book #AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur’s Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness. I often read or listen to books that cover entrepreneurship. If you’ve read any of these, or listened to any related podcasts, you will have heard of Gary Vee. Gary is a Belarusian-American whose name is Gary Vaynerchuk.
2021-01-21
In the past, I was an unashamed fan of the Dilbert cartoon strip. In recent years though, the author (Scott Adams) has become a pretty divisive character in and around US politics and life in general. So I was intrigued by his book Win Bigly.
Nowadays, I keep hearing many people refer to him as being very pro-Trump and in the opinion stakes, that immediately cuts him off from half the US population, and the majority of the world.
2020-04-24
I know that many people found Christopher Hitchens a divisive character. Mostly that’s because he very openly, directly questioned, and at times ridiculed, long-held beliefs about religion and about inappropriately revered people. He did not (as the old saying goes) suffer fools gladly. I read Mortality quite a while ago and wanted to wait a while after his death to see how I still felt about it.
Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010 while on a book tour for Hitch-22. Hitchens died in December 2011.
2020-03-20
I mentioned recently that I haven’t been doing as much driving in my car lately, so that’s limited the time I’ve had for listening to audio books. But another one that I did complete on Audible recently was Stories I’d Tell in Bars by Jen Lancaster.
I’ve seen comments about the printed version of this book, that say it’s riddled with typos and grammar/spelling errors but fortunately that wasn’t an issue for me as I listened to the audiobook. The narration of that was fine.
2020-03-06
I haven’t been doing as much driving in my car lately, so that’s limited the time I’ve had for listening to audio books. But one that I did complete recently was AI Super Powers by Kai-Fu Lee. The subtitle is China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.
This is an area that I’ve been really passionate about for the last few years. I can see AI changing so much of our current world, and much sooner than I think most people will realise.
2020-02-07
