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I'm Feeling Lucky audiobook cover

I’m Feeling Lucky by Douglas Edwards

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I’ve learned that I don’t really go in for memoirs, but for whatever reason this one appealed to me. It was written by one of Google’s first marketing people. It’s a wild story that covers a lot of ground with Google: multiple offices, expansion after expansion, and plenty of internal political battles. The author is a great writer, and he does own up to at least one mistake. He also clearly had no love lost for Marissa Mayer. The only reason this isn’t a four-star for me is because I prefer business books with data-backed insights and lessons over retrospectives. If memoirs are your thing, then this would be an interesting read into the early days of Google.


Genre: Bios & Memoirs, Non-Fiction
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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World audiobook cover

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

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At one point I was burnt out on the sci-fi I was reading and searched out some different recommendations. “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” came up from someone. It’s not sci-fi, it’s kind of an out-there fiction novel, and very much not western. I felt about it the way that I felt after going to an avante garde musical performance at MoMA years ago: way beyond my level of appreciation. This book is better than that performance, and at least with this book I can recognize that it’s fascinating, creative, pushing the boundaries… and also simply not for me. 


Genre: Fiction
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Earth Unaware by Aaron Johnston, Orson Scott Card

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When this came out I was glad the Enderverse was expanding to cover the events leading up to Ender’s Game. The first in the series is a setup for the rest of the series. It’s clear that the book was meant to be part of a greater story, and with that in mind, it serves its purpose. It sets up the state of affairs in our solar system before the Buggers arrive and gets you ready for the action that follows. If you’re a fan of Ender’s Game and are expecting a version of that, you’ll be disappointed. What you should expect is a new series with a new angle and few familiar names.


Genre: Sci-Fi
Series: Enderverse, The First Formic War |
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Avogadro Corp by William Hertling

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The premise of the book—and keep in mind it was published in 2012—is that someone within a company that very much resembles Google, creates an AI to predict what you want to say in an email. That AI becomes sentient and off we go. As such, I was quite amused when Gmail first introduced its predictive responses. If you’re looking for a short sci-fi book that might get you thinking about implications of “runaway AI” then Avogadro Corp and the subsequent books might be the way to go. I wasn’t blown away by them though. 


Genre: Sci-Fi
Series: Singularity |
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Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle

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Starswarm is a unique stand-alone book with, what was at the time of its publication in 1998, a very far-fetched concept: an AI implant connected to the cloud. I enjoyed the book, and seem to recall that I read it twice, but didn’t get any more out of it from the second read. This is a quirk of mine: if I like a book, I’ll read it again a few months later to see if there is more there beneath the surface. Some of my favorite books I’ve read nearly a dozen times (Ender’s Game, House of Suns) or 3-4 times through for the longer series (Hyperion Cantos, Commonwealth Saga).

I digress. Good book, not much else. 


Genre: Sci-Fi
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