Just a Geek, by Wil Wheaton

My second geek book in a row, but this one was a much more pleasant experience! Where it took me a couple of weeks of effort to digest the dry prose of Leading Geeks, the dry wit found in Just a Geek was consumed in a couple of hours. This is the story of how a waning celebrity came to terms with himself and started his second career.

There are some great Star Trek anecdotes here, good vision into what happens behind the scenes at cons. He also talks about various auditions and acting gigs—an enlightening look at world that is completely foreign to me. In my favorite vignette he describes an amazingly harsh imaginary response to an insulting audition:

“I’ve been working my ass off to give you this performance, and even though I can tell that you’re not interested in me at all, I’m going to fucking do this, okay? ... So why don’t you all just lighten the fuck up, and respect the fact that I came in here to do this stupid song and dance for your noncreative asses?!”

Well, that’s not exactly true. I said something more like, “Oh. Well, thanks for seeing me,” and I walked out of the room.

Priceless stuff, and exactly the kind of diatribe I carry on in my own mind constantly but never have the balls to say. One of these days...

While most of the stories are related to Wheaton’s acting career, the writing takes center stage here. I enjoy Wheaton’s blog and was curious how his style would translate into a full-length book. Quite well, as it turns out, although a fair portion of the text comes directly from his online entries. He carries the narrative well, though, stitching the stories behind the blog together fairly seamlessly. To use an analogy, if the blog was a DVD, this book would be a commentary track. Unlike many commentaries, though, this one rocks!

First Sentence:

On a hot June afternoon in 2000, I joined my best friend Darin for lunch at one of our teenage haunts, Old Town Pasadena.

Leading Geeks, by Paul Glen

This book echoes a lot of beliefs that I hold true, and validation is always a pleasant thing. You’d think I liked it because of that, but I found it a tough read. The style is very dry and overly structured: the premise is broken into a few large sections, each section split into main topics, each topic contains a list of items, each item detailed. While functional decomposition is great for software, it makes for a tedious book! Plus, when an item touches on something covered elsewhere, a simple “Chapter Ten will discuss this” is written and tying the points together is an exercise left for the reader. In a few places this would happen multiple times on the same page, a habit I found really irritating.

That said, the basic theme is one with which I wholeheartedly agree: successfully managing software developers is much more complicated than simply handing out requirements and posting deadlines. A leader of technical people needs to provide a comfortable environment where people can be creative and productive. Insulating the talent from corporate politics while singing their praises up the chain and managing the ambiguity that is inherent with software are other major facets. Finally, something that good leaders understand is geeks don’t suffer fools gladly; amusingly this is often directed at the leaders themselves!

A hodgepodge of other facets this book discusses: power is useless for manipulating geeks; creativity can’t be controlled; and dates not tied to anything in reality will never motivate a team. All of these I believe are closer to the truth than not, but I wouldn’t call them infallible, either. For instance, while developers tend to respect knowledge over power, we’ve all been through enough layoffs to understand who really holds the cards. Interesting discussions.

While Glen mostly gets it, he has some odd opinions on seating. He feels that team rooms are bad for concentration and lead to productivity loss. Cubes, though, can be a good thing if they are all the same because there isn’t any status attached to having an office. I think that the team should be able to make this sort of call; some groups I’ve seen strongly prefer a bullpen and it clearly helps the project to have them all together. Others want offices and a conference room for group meetings. Nobody wants cubes—nobody. Cubes are the worst of both worlds: they give the illusion of privacy without actually granting any, yet replaces natural collaboration with prairie dogging. Of course, I’m currently stuck and miserable in cubeville right now so maybe this passage simply rubbed me the wrong way.

I think if you are a non-technical person that finds yourself in charge of a software team, this book can provide some solid insight into the world of developers. Individual contributors that are promoted to managers could benefit from reading this too; hopefully they will pick something up about how different leading is from doing. Experienced supervisors, though, might be a bit bored.

First Sentence:

I hope that you have begun this book with a head full of questions:

• What’s different about leading geeks from leading anyone else?
• What can I do to better leverage my organization’s investment in these expensive, valuable, and temperamental employees?
• What makes geeks so different to manage?

Conquistador, by S. M. Stirling

In 1946, a malfunctioning short wave radio opens a gate into an alternate world—one where Europe never discovered North America. The owner of the short wave doesn’t share the discovery with the rest of the world, but instead invites a select group of people to cross over and colonize this unspoiled countryside. Fast-forward to 2009 and during a smuggling bust a photo of authentic Aztec priests wearing Greatful Dead shirts and a live condor from a completely unknown gene pool is recovered, starting a chain of events that threatens the secret of the gate. And all this happens in the first 20 pages!

This is a l-o-n-g book, nearly 600 pages. While I enjoyed it quite a bit, it could have easily been half the length and still entertaining. A lot of exposition here, and much of it superfluous. Take this sentence, describing a character that is incidental to the plot: “Lord Seven Flower himself was in the traditional costume: silver armbands and greaves, a loincloth intricately folded so that a long flap of snowy cotton edged with embroidery hung to his knees before and behind, gold chains and a gold pectoral across his chest, and a headdress made in the form of a snarling silver jaguar’s head with golden spots, eyes of turquoise and ivory teeth, sporting a huge torrent of colored plumes from its rear in gaudy crimson and green and mauve.” While I really like the imagery, passages like this tend to make me think of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

I would have liked to see a bit more explanations about the gate, but the author simply treats it like the MacGuffin it is. The ending is a bit predictable, and surprisingly doesn't directly set up for a sequel. The characters and world are interesting enough, though, so I’d like to see Stirling will revisit them someday.

First Sentence:

I joined the Department of Fish and Game because I couldn’t be a soldier anymore and I hate cities, Tom Christiansen thought, the Berretta cold and unforgiving in his hands.

The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope

The Prisoner of Zenda tells the story of Rudolf Rassendyll, a dilettantish Englishman who happens to be a dead-ringer for the king of a fictional Balkan State. The king is captured (becoming the prisoner of the title) and our hero masquerades in his place in order to thwart the kidnapper. It reminded me a lot of The Man in the Iron Mask for obvious reasons but instead of trying to replace a debauched ruler, here we are trying to save a sovereign. Zenda started a bit slowly, but once it got rolling I had a hard time putting it down.

First Sentence:

“I wonder when in the world you're going to do anything, Rudolf?” said my brother’s wife.

Burglars Can't Be Choosers, by Lawrence Block

This is the first of the Burglar books, a series I promised to revisit. Characters are introduced and developed, relationships are established, and the ongoing premise of twisted honesty is established. It appears that there are two main characters in most of the Burglar books, the thief Bernie and the cop Ray. Both of these guys are “a different kind of honest;” Ray isn’t above taking a bribe but will not break his promises, and Bernie is a crook that wants justice. Makes for an interesting setting, but unfortunately here the plot was pretty weak. There are way too many coincidences, and any character that is given a name figures into the crime for which Bernie is framed. While this can work, it doesn’t come off as well here. The players are quite compelling, though, so I’ll revisit Bernie in the future.

First Sentence:

A handful of minutes after nine I hoisted my Bloomingdale’s shopping bag and moved out of a doorway and into step with a tall blond fellow with a faintly equine cast to his face.

Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Levitt and Dubner are certainly not trying to make any friends here! They start by demonstrating how teachers commit fraud, then compare the Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents, illustrate how legalizing abortion has dramatically dropped nationwide crime rates, and finally wrap up with two chapters about how little active parenting actually affects children. Wow. Sure to offend both conservatives (capital punishment doesn’t deter crime) and liberals (a swimming pool is more dangerous than a gun), these guys aren’t running for public office anytime soon!

The entire time I was reading this I couldn’t shake the idea that I was overhearing a group of friends having a good-natured debate at a bar. A lot of thought-provoking questions are asked, but the answers—while seemingly well-reasoned—are lacking much backing data. For example, at one point the assertion is made that traveling in either a car or a plane carries roughly the same odds of dying when measured on a per-hour basis. Okay, I buy it; I certainly spend much more time driving than flying, so the odds of being in a car crash are much greater than a plane wreck. However, there are no data presented about what those numbers may be. It seems reasonable, meshes well with my gut feel, sounds as good sober as it does with a couple of beers. It is also unsubstantiated, something I find a bit surprising for a book on economics.

Another question discussed is, “Does a persons name affect how he is perceived? Is DeShawn Williams treated differently than Jake Williams” It has always seemed to me that the answer to this is yes, but only in absentia. If I hear of someone named Nosmo or Santa or Seven, I’m going to roll my eyes and snicker. Once I’m introduced to that person, though, the name becomes much less important and instead how he or she acts becomes paramount. This issue of how face-time changes perceptions isn’t really touched upon.

Another problem I have is that many of the points-of-view presented are too US-centric. For instance, while it is true that the uptick in abortions seems to correspond with the downtick in violent crime in America, my understanding is this isn’t true in other countries with similar changes in birth control laws. It would be interesting to delve into the data and perhaps see why, but again that isn’t presented here. This isn’t a great treatise on economics because of the lack of hard data. What it is, however, is a really good book for starting bar arguments. I enjoyed reading it, and will recommend it to others without hesitation.

First Sentence:

Imagine for a moment that you are the manager of a day-care center.

Southtown, by Rick Riordan

I’m a fan of both Rick Riordan and Tres Navarre, his San Antonio PI. This is the fifth book in the series, and while a good read, the worst so far. The main villain is hunting both Tres’ boss and competitor, and the rivals need to come together to protect each other. The big twist at the end is telegraphed as well, with not much of a payoff. Bummer. There is a chapter of the next book included here, though, which sounds much more interesting. Looking forward to that one!

First Sentence:

Fourth of July morning, Will Stirman woke up with blood on his hands.