Ken Newquist's Blog at Lafayette College
I first read Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber novels in college, after being introduced to them by my roommate. I’ve revisited them several times over the years. They revolve around the city of Amber, which is the archetypal city and the nexus of all Order in the universe. Everything else is shades of Chaos; any worlds you … Read more
The Rhythm of War is the fourth book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. It’s epic fantasy in the vein of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, and at 1,232 pages (57 hours, 26 minutes in audiobook form) it is a hefty tome. I’m planning on alternating between the print and audio versions … if I can … Read more
The follow-up to Patrick Rothfuss’ excellent novel The Name of the Wind is a hefty book, weighing in at just over 1,000 pages. I’m listening to the audio book, which clocks in at 42 hours and 55 minutes. It’s long enough that I spent most of the summer listening to it, typically on my morning walks around … Read more
The novel kicks off with an investigation into “False Memory Syndrome”, in which people suddenly find they have memories of another life. Confronted with these echoes of a parallel life, people become unhinged … or worse. I don’t want to give away the plot, but suffice it to say, things get weirder from there. Recursion … Read more
After reading The Phoenix Project and Beyond the Phoenix Project, I wanted to delve deeper into Agile approaches to project management. ITS follows a traditional waterfall approach to project management, which provides structure and helps people think about what needs to be done, but it can be inflexible when you need to move quickly. This book covers … Read more
The second book in the Vatta’s Peace series (itself a follow up to the excellent Vatta’s War books) finds its hero, Admiral Kylara Vatta, in desperate straits. She and others maroon on an arctic island have escaped certain death, finding a secret base in the process. But now the shadowy organization who’d been exploiting that base is … Read more
My summer reading list for 2019 is underway. It features 18 books and 5 graphic novels, making one of the biggest ones since I started keeping a formal list 12 years ago. As usual, it’s heavy on science fiction (space opera and military SF in particular) but there is a fantasy novel and a horror … Read more
The follow-up to the DevOps novel The Phoenix Project looks at the growth of the movement over the last five years. It’s packed full of great information about DevOps, Agile, and Lean practices, and could easily spawn a summer reading list of its own. The “book” is an audio recording of two of Gene Kim … Read more
Alex White’s A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe is a curious mixup of space opera and fantasy arcana, with a dash of military SF thrown in. I missed the “magic” bit when I was adding it to my Christmas wish list, and I was surprised when I read the first few pages in the … Read more