Hello subscribers,
Had I written this a week ago, I would feel better about clogging up your inboxes with my words. I think Matt Levine said it best in his Money Stuff newsletter today.
I don’t know. Mostly I am dazed and heartbroken all the time, and it seems trivial and disrespectful to write a column about finance these days.
It feels silly to write this update now. But I’m going to anyway. I’m committed to writing this at least once month and I’ve delayed it long enough.
New articles by me in May
I dislike that I needed to set this up but I modified my bash setup to tell me when it finishes running any long running processes. This has made me more productive at work.
Interesting Twitter threads
I’ve started bookmarking Twitter threads I think are interesting and am thinking I’ll share them here. I don’t spend a ton of time on social media but the time I do spend I might as well use make useful to others. This is in no way an exhaustive list of useful things I’ve seen in the last month but here are some.
Books I’ve read
I read a bunch of books in May. Three of them were by Chimamanda Ngbozi Adichi. Here are the books.
Dear Ijeawele; or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1) by Octavia E. Butler
Writing for Software Developers by Philip Kiely
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Hard Truth: Simple Ways to Become a Better Climber by Kris Hampton
You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
May was a good month for reading. Every single book I read, I’d pretty much recommend without hesitation to anyone that is intrigued by the book’s description.
The only exception to this is Writing for Software Developers. I read this book because it did a great job of targeting a very specific niche. I'm a software developer and consider myself a writer. Just earlier this year, I crossed a decade of writing online about software and other topics. This book is fine and I found it interesting. But I don’t think it is for everyone. Have you been writing for a while? Are you interested in writing for others? Those are questions you should ask yourself. This book is mostly about writing for others. You can learn from anyone, regardless of your experience difference, and I did learn some things from that book but still, it isn’t for everyone.
The books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie were super good. The feminism specific ones are short and Americanah is not short. The writing in all is beautiful and well crafted. Americanah has some beautiful passages. I’d highly recommend.
The Hard Truth is a short book around climbing. I’d recommend it if you climb. It attacks the mental stories we tell ourselves and how to push past them to climb harder. If I tried so summarize it, it is basically a book that tells you to try harder and focus on improvement, not socializing. That summary is obviously wrong in many ways.
Parable of the Sower is another Octavia Butler example of what great science fiction can be. Go read it. Octavia Butler is an amazing author.
End
I developed a silly TypeScript application last month but I haven’t had time to put it online. Hopefully I’ll wrap that up this month and you’ll be hearing about it sometime in June.
It is hard to end this update. My city, and much of my country, is in upheaval now. I hope change happens and I’m contributing in ways that I can.
Thank you for taking the time to read this silly update about books and bash trickery. If you liked it, tell your friends. Regardless, feel free to email me about anything. Assuming Google doesn’t hide the email, I’ll read it.
Jake
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