What I’m Reading: Manage Your Day-to-Day

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I first read “Manage Your Day-to-Day” after attending David Cameron’s presentation “Human at Work or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Better at My Job” at  HighEdWeb 2014.  The presentation had a big impact on me and inspired me to look at things like: Blocking out creative/project time on my calendar Knowing when my most … Read more

What I’m Reading: Blood of Amber

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A woman sits under a tree in a grove. Mountains and a unicorn appear in the background

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

What I’m Reading: The Wise Man’s Fear

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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

What I’m Reading: Recursion

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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

What I’m Reading: Learning Agile

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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

What I’m Reading: Into the Fire

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A silhouette of a woman in front of an alien jungle landscape.

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

Summer Reading List 2019

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A space ship explodes as it approaches the outer atmosphere of a planet.

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