The I read in July was "Der ", from Stefan aus dem .

It's the story of a man who grows to become the tallest man in his country.

Being relatively tall myself, various passages resonated with me and reminded me of my own thoughts during my growth spurt. Maybe this is why I felt the character, despite his extraordinary circumstances, portrayed very realistically. A well-written which, notwithstanding its sad theme, feels rather uplifting.

The I read in June was , by Marc .

Europe's electricity grid stops functioning, and the ensuing chaos is described from the perspective of multiple characters. Only the major ones felt fleshed out, but they still were diverse enough to cover aspects of politics, engineering, the elderly, hospitals and many more, which gave a good overview of the situation.

And while the fiction was mostly okay, the science part seemed quite realistic, at least to my limited knowledge.

The I read in May was "Desert Flower", by Waris .

I didn't know what to expect; a rural African tale, or a rags-to-riches supermodel story. It turned out to be both, but thanks to Dirie's description of her view I never felt any dissonance between the two worlds.

Still, it is remarkable that these two worlds coexist. We're used to books taking us to exotic places, but they're either fictional or set in the past. Perhaps the world is still a little bigger than it appears to be.

The I read in April was "The Mind of a Mnemonist", by Alexander . Another non-fiction book; it's the account of a Russian psychologist, who studied a man, "S.", with seemingly unlimited .

The book was much less dry than I had anticipated. It examined S.'s abilities from many different perspectives, trying to identify the source of this "superpower" - but also the effects it had on S.'s life.

In a peculiar way, it was akin to a study of a superhero power, only real.

In March, I decided to read a non-fiction for a change - "Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus Persson and the Game That Changed Everything".

The book seemed well researched, and - as I feel is the case with almost any book on a subject - was much better structured than the articles. I especially enjoyed the parts about Markus' pre- life, and the Swedish gamedev scene/industry.

As a non-fiction, it might not have been the most compelling read, but it sure was insightful.

Continuing on my goal to read one a month, the second one this year was "Rise of the Horde" by Christie .

Having never before read any books set in a game universe, my expectations were quite low, but the book easily surpassed them. The main characters were well fleshed out and believable, and the overall culture beautifully described. Thrall's commentary before each chapter was a welcome addition.

It might not be high literature, but it sure was thoroughly enjoyable.

I made it a goal in 2018 to read one a month, and finished the first one just in time (thanks to my e-reader, and the hour-long commuting I had to do so often during the last weeks).

Cory 's "Eastern Standard Tribe" has a few interesting ideas, with the "Tribes" concept making the biggest impression on me. I wasn't very fond of the writing style, but I enjoyed the overall presentation, with narration hopping back and forth in time (and person), and incorporating IRC-like chats.

Mastodon

The social network of the future: No ads, no corporate surveillance, ethical design, and decentralization! Own your data with Mastodon!
https://social.tchncs.de/@Pabo/tagged/book
social.tchncs.de
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-05
38850
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:JWMXPBWYAXACU5YFANEQEVZXOOPBBRDZ
<urn:uuid:2d21589e-51b5-472a-b649-a95de81f3864>
2022-01-20T11:09:19Z
5.9.120.199
text/html
sha1:567LUUNSCKN4UYW2AIXAGOCP7DGJ5C3X
<urn:uuid:79353600-194a-4974-8ee7-20fe332bfa09>
https://social.tchncs.de/@Pabo/tagged/book
response
<urn:uuid:b4c831f6-2393-44f9-beef-2fe64171765d>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-05
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-9
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/