bookwyrm.cincodenada.com

arensb@books.birdsonbicycles.racing reviewed Walking Through Fire by Sherri Cook Woosley

No cover — Walking Through Fire (Paperback, 2018, Talos)

Fun premise, poor execution

2 stars

At first, it was mostly fun watching disaster strike the eastern seaboard, and seeing our heroes' adventures in places I'm familiar with. But somewhere in the last 100 pages, I finally realized that it had become a chore to read, and I finally put it down.

The final straw for me was the Scroll that Magically Turns into Whichever Book You Want to Read But Only If You Say Your Wish Out Loud. That sounds like something out of a fairy tale rather than a fantasy novel, and isn't what I'm in the mood for right now.

On the plus side, Woosley does know Baltimore, and her descriptions make it clear that she has experience with people with cancer, or at least she's done her research. And hey, who wouldn't want to see Babylonian gods firebomb the Chesapeake?

arensb@books.birdsonbicycles.racing reviewed The Last Tsar's Dragons by Jane Yolen

Close to historical. Except the dragons.

4 stars

Content warning for the pervasive antisemitism, but I’d say it’s simply there because the story is set in a very antisemitic time and place.

arensb@books.birdsonbicycles.racing reviewed Memory's Legion by James S. A. Corey

Review of "Memory's Legion" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Like any connection of short stories, this one is a mixed bag. Some, like "Drive", full in sooner off the Expanse universe's history. Others focus on just one of the characters: "Churn" tells of how Amos grew up in and left Baltimore, and "God's of Risk" follows Bobbie in civilian life.

Worth reading? Yes if you've read the rest of the Expanse and want more.

arensb@books.birdsonbicycles.racing reviewed Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

Grave Peril (AudiobookFormat, 2005, Buzzy Multimedia)

Now in hardcover from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dresden Files.Harry Dresden's …

Review of 'Grave Peril' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

I'm withholding a rating because I read this under less than ideal circumstances: I borrowed the audio book on CD from my local library, and listened to it over several sessions, with long gaps in between. Combined with a few mistakes such that I listened to chapters out of order.

Beyond that, this one seems darker and grittier than the previous two.

arensb@books.birdsonbicycles.racing reviewed H.P. Lovecraft's the Call of Cthulhu for Beginning Readers by R. J. Ivankovic

Review of "H.P. Lovecraft's the Call of Cthulhu for Beginning Readers" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

As you'd expect from the cover, this is a mashup of H.P. Lovecraft and [a:Dr. Seuss|61105|Dr. Seuss|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1193930952p2/61105.jpg]. Or what would it look like if Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated the story of [b:The Call of Cthulhu|15730101|The Call of Cthulhu|H.P. Lovecraft|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1567470807l/15730101.SX50.jpg|25692046]?

The illustrations are spot on, to the point where I think the author may have traced or copied liberally from Seuss's work. And the writing is excellent as well, telling in happy verse the story of nameless horrors that drive people mad.

arensb@books.birdsonbicycles.racing reviewed Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the Annotated Classic Edition by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve short stories by Arthur Conan …

Review of 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the Annotated Classic Edition' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I have a dim memory of reading this book when I was younger, but since then I’ve seen Sherlock Holmes in countless adaptations: movies, TV shows, comics, video games, and more. Some good, some bad.

And so, I was afraid that these stories would stick to a formula: someone brings Holmes a case; he impresses everyone by noticing impossible details and drawing strained conclusions; insults Watson for not being preternaturally observant; insults Inspector Lestrade for being an idiot; notices that one of the ashes in the fireplace is actually not only from tobacco, but produced by Javanese cigars, and thus the murderer must be blah-de-blah yadda yadda lock ‘em up, the end.

So I was glad to see that they don’t. There’s a good amount of variety: Holmes shows up the police (of course); Holmes falls in love; the mystery is not a crime; a locked-door murder outdoors; and more. …

I have a dim memory of reading this book when I was younger, but since then I’ve seen Sherlock Holmes in countless adaptations: movies, TV shows, comics, video games, and more. Some good, some bad.

And so, I was afraid that these stories would stick to a formula: someone brings Holmes a case; he impresses everyone by noticing impossible details and drawing strained conclusions; insults Watson for not being preternaturally observant; insults Inspector Lestrade for being an idiot; notices that one of the ashes in the fireplace is actually not only from tobacco, but produced by Javanese cigars, and thus the murderer must be blah-de-blah yadda yadda lock ‘em up, the end.

So I was glad to see that they don’t. There’s a good amount of variety: Holmes shows up the police (of course); Holmes falls in love; the mystery is not a crime; a locked-door murder outdoors; and more.

Of course, like a lot of Victorian writing, some parts have not aged well. There’s a good amount of sexism, though thankfully no racism that I noticed. It’s easy enough for a modern reader to write off these flaws as the stories being a product of their time.

arensb@books.birdsonbicycles.racing reviewed DevOps with Kubernetes: Accelerating software delivery with container orchestrators by Hideto Saito

Review of 'DevOps with Kubernetes: Accelerating software delivery with container orchestrators' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

The authors seem to know their material, and it's presented in a good order. Unfortunately, none of them are fluent in written English, and it shows. It's not too bad when they're giving an overview of the history of software development to show how we got to where we are now. It's worse when they're deep in the technical stuff: it's hard enough to follow the material without having to wrestle with the language.

Here's the paragraph that made me give up. It's in a section describing how, when it's short of either CPU or memory, Kubernetes kills BestEffort pods (sets of containers) first, then Burstable ones, then Guaranteed ones:

Even though, change to configure resource limit only, but if container A has CPU limit only, then container B has memory limit only, then result will also be Burstable again because Kubernetes knows only either limit

This book desperately needs …

The authors seem to know their material, and it's presented in a good order. Unfortunately, none of them are fluent in written English, and it shows. It's not too bad when they're giving an overview of the history of software development to show how we got to where we are now. It's worse when they're deep in the technical stuff: it's hard enough to follow the material without having to wrestle with the language.

Here's the paragraph that made me give up. It's in a section describing how, when it's short of either CPU or memory, Kubernetes kills BestEffort pods (sets of containers) first, then Burstable ones, then Guaranteed ones:

Even though, change to configure resource limit only, but if container A has CPU limit only, then container B has memory limit only, then result will also be Burstable again because Kubernetes knows only either limit

This book desperately needs the help of someone fluent in written English, and I think less of Packt for not working with the authors on this. If this is fixed in the next edition, I'll be happy to give a higher rating.