Holiday reading

[jorallan]

My reading from 10 days in Majorca:

• From Techie to Boss (Scott Cromar): a guide for how to transition from being a techie in the trenches to team lead / project manager / people manager. All a bit too "management from on high" (aka waterfall) for my tastes, particularly the project management bits; the words "change control board" generally want to make me run as far and as fast from a project as possible.
• The Protos Mandate (Nick Kanas): part of Springer's "Scientific Novel" series, and frankly a perfect example of why you shouldn't let scientists pretend to be authors. Probably best summed up by the author themselves in the "Science behind the Fiction" section after the story itself: "the [story reflects] traditional American values [...] with good guys and bad guys and relatively formulaic plot lines." - although I'd probably change "relatively formulaic" to "incredibly predictable".
• Building Great Software Engineering Teams (Joshua Tyler): a better guide to being a good software leader. Very startup focused, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn't agree with everything in here (should a founder at a ~100 person startup still be doing the initial CV screening - probably not) but the book's a good place to start if you're looking at being a software leader, either as a manager, a technical leader or a startup founder type role.
• The Long War (Terry Pratchett / Stephen Baxter): the second of the Long Earth series. I very much liked The Long Earth, and this started promisingly with a couple of interesting major plot threads (along with a couple of minor ones as well). The major threads continued to develop... but then all just ended rather suddenly, followed by a very telegraphed hook for the next book. Enough interesting stuff going on for me to read the next one though.
• Finding a Million-Star Hotel (Bob Mizon): a guide to getting to see the Milky Way and the rest of the stars, an increasingly difficult problem in this day and age. Generally pretty good, but a lot of filler (which I skipped), particularly the list of "dark sky places" in the UK and the US and the details of every solar eclipse until 2027. Had the best line of any book this holiday: "Most astronomers are very sane, tolerant people."
• Horus Rising (Dan Abnett): the first of novels giving the backstory to Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K universe. Fairly standard military sci-fi; I suspect readers will either know the rough outline of the Horus Heresy (in which case the plot won't be too surprising) or won't be interested in it, in which case I suspect the book won't hold their attention for too long. Definitely worth the $0.20 if you consider I got five of the Horus Heresy novels for $1 in a Humble Bundle deal, and probably even worth the $1 if I don't read any of the rest of them.
• Down and Out in Purgatory (Tim Powers): a quick novella about a guy who wants revenge on his love rival, even though said rival is now dead. A bit predicatable, but only an hour or so to read so not the end of world.

Other than that lot, I also read most of Alistair Reynolds's "Revelation Space" when either sitting on the beach or when Karen or James stole the Kindle. Not quite finished yet, and a bit weird as I've read the Revelation Space stories mostly in reverse order (Absolution Gap first, followed by Redemption Ark and now Revelation Space) so I have a fair idea what's going to happen...