en-US Tue, 20 Sep 2022 13:01:29 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 25102 The Doll's House, who here finds herself a princess in a vivid dreamworld. collecting The Sandman #32�37]]> 192 Neil Gaiman 1563890933 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.43 1992
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Jack
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 13530983 FORGOTTEN REALMS is the most successful and widely known DUNGEONS & DRAGONS campaign setting ever created, and it owes its existence to creator Ed Greenwood.

This 160-page hardcover book describes the campaign setting as it lives and breathes in the imagination of its creator. Through the alter ego of Elminster, Archmage of Shadowdale, Ed Greenwood presents the Realms as a setting where companies of crazed adventurers are born and have rich lives, and where they get to call the shots. In this book, Ed presents a world where friendships are forged, endless intrigues unfold, and heroes wage war against the monstrous inhabitants of famous dungeons and untamed wildernesses.

For the FORGOTTEN REALMS fan, this book provides a rare glimpse into the setting as imagined by its creator, with new information on its visible and clandestine rulers, various merchant and trade princes, the churches and mercenary companies of the Realms, renown magic-users and secret societies, adventuring companies, and the web of alliances and enmities that connect them. The book is aimed at all Forgotten Realms enthusiasts, including players of every edition of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game.]]> 192 Ed Greenwood 0786960345 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.27 2012
author: Ed Greenwood
name: Jack
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 7507944 Akata Witch transports the reader to a magical place where nothing is quite as it seems. Born in New York, but living in Aba, Nigeria, twelve-year old Sunny is understandably a little lost. She is albino and thus, incredibly sensitive to the sun. All Sunny wants to do is be able to play football and get through another day of school without being bullied. But once she befriends Orlu and Chichi, Sunny is plunged in to the world of the Leopard People, where your worst defect becomes your greatest asset. Together, Sunny, Orlu, Chichi and Sasha form the youngest ever Oha Coven. Their mission is to track down Black Hat Otokoto, the man responsible for kidnapping and maiming children. Will Sunny be able to overcome the killer with powers stronger than her own, or will the future she saw in the flames become reality?]]> 349 Nnedi Okorafor 0670011967 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.02 2011
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Jack
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/08
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 37812760 177 Will Eaves 1909585262 Jack 0 currently-reading 3.40 2018
author: Will Eaves
name: Jack
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 39996759 190 John Ousterhout 1732102201 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.18 2018
author: John Ousterhout
name: Jack
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 33369254
In this book, author Camille Fournier takes you through the stages of technical management, from mentoring interns to working with the senior staff. You ll get actionable advice for approaching various obstacles in your path, whether you re a new manager, a mentor, or a more experienced leader looking for fresh advice. Pick up this book and learn how to become a better manager and leader in your organization.

* Discover how to manage small teams and large/multi-level teams
* Understand how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams
* Deal with people problems and learn how to mentor other managers and new leaders
* Learn how to manage yourself: avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders
* Obtain several practices that you can incorporate and practice along the way]]> 226 Camille Fournier 1491973897 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.23 2017
author: Camille Fournier
name: Jack
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 68378
The war against the dragon minions of Queen Takhisis rages on. Armed with the mysterious, magical Dragon Orbs and the shining, silver Dragonlance, the Companions of the Lance lead their people in a desperate final battle. Knight and barbarian, warrior and mage, dwarf and kender—no one has reckoned how high the price of defeat, or even victory, might be.

But now, in the dawn of a new day, the dark secrets that have long shadowed the hearts of the Companions come to light. If they are to truly defeat the five-headed dragon goddess, they must find a way to overcome their own personal conflicts and doubts. From betrayal and treachery to fragility and weakness, the greatest battle now lies within each of them.

Finally armed with dragonlances, a group of heroes, composed of a knight, barbarian, dwarf, and half-elf, faces a deadly showdown with the evil dragons and Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness.]]> 352 Margaret Weis 0786930705 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.14 1985
author: Margaret Weis
name: Jack
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin Jack 0 currently-reading 4.39 2008
author: Liu Cixin
name: Jack
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/12/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 26759355
Authors Kelsey Hightower, Brendan Burns, and Joe Beda--who've worked on Kubernetes at Google--explain how this system fits into the lifecycle of a distributed application. You will learn how to use tools and APIs to automate scalable distributed systems, whether it is for online services, machine-learning applications, or a cluster of Raspberry Pi computers.


Explore the distributed system challenges that Kubernetes addresses
Dive into containerized application development, using containers such as Docker
Create and run containers on Kubernetes, using Docker's Image format and container runtime
Explore specialized objects essential for running applications in production
Reliably roll out new software versions without downtime or errors
Get examples of how to develop and deploy real-world applications in Kubernetes


]]> 202 Kelsey Hightower 1491935677 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.03 2016
author: Kelsey Hightower
name: Jack
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/06/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 34638306
Never before have we had so much information available to us about food and health. There’s GAPS, paleo, detox, gluten-free, alkaline, the sugar conspiracy, clean eating... Unfortunately, a lot of it is not only wrong but actually harmful. So why do so many of us believe this bad science?

Assembling a crack team of psychiatrists, behavioural economists, food scientists and dietitians, the Angry Chef unravels the mystery of why sensible, intelligent people are so easily taken in by the latest food fads, making brief detours for an expletive-laden rant. At the end of it all you’ll have the tools to spot pseudoscience for yourself and the Angry Chef will be off for a nice cup of tea � and it will have two sugars in it, thank you very much.]]> 326 Anthony Warner 1786072165 Jack 0 3.85 2017
author: Anthony Warner
name: Jack
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/07/05
shelves: currently-reading, non-fiction
review:

]]> 26228034 410 N.K. Jemisin Jack 0 currently-reading, fantasy 4.27 2016
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Jack
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/06/01
shelves: currently-reading, fantasy
review:

]]> 26009702 For an intelligence officer like Jim it's a nightmare. Every week or so a friendly power spawns a new and unknown national entity which may or may not be friendly to England's interests. It's hard to keep on top of it all.
But things are about to get worse for Jim. A stabbing on a London bus pitches him into a world where his intelligence service is preparing for war with another universe, and a man has appeared who may hold the key to unlocking Europe's most jealously guarded secret...]]> 304 Dave Hutchinson 1781083983 Jack 0 currently-reading, sci-fi 3.97 2015
author: Dave Hutchinson
name: Jack
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/03/11
shelves: currently-reading, sci-fi
review:

]]> 32782900
So open it up, find the beat and enter the strange and marvellous world of Murray Lachlan Young.]]> 352 Murray Lachlan Young 1783523549 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.47
author: Murray Lachlan Young
name: Jack
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/10/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 24442314 88 Christina Rice Jack 0 currently-reading 3.73 2015
author: Christina Rice
name: Jack
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/02/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 2485075 The Ruby Programming Language is the authoritative guide to Ruby and provides comprehensive coverage of versions 1.8 and 1.9 of the language. It was written (and illustrated!) by an all-star team:


David Flanagan, bestselling author of programming language "bibles" (including JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and Java in a Nutshell) and committer to the Ruby Subversion repository.


Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator, designer and lead developer of Ruby and author of Ruby in a Nutshell, which has been expanded and revised to become this book.


why the lucky stiff, artist and Ruby programmer extraordinaire. This book begins with a quick-start tutorial to the language, and then explains the language in detail from the bottom up: from lexical and syntactic structure to datatypes to expressions and statements and on through methods, blocks, lambdas, closures, classes and modules.

The book also includes a long and thorough introduction to the rich API of the Ruby platform, demonstrating -- with heavily-commented example code -- Ruby's facilities for text processing, numeric manipulation, collections, input/output, networking, and concurrency. An entire chapter is devoted to Ruby's metaprogramming capabilities.

The Ruby Programming Language documents the Ruby language definitively but without the formality of a language specification. It is written for experienced programmers who are new to Ruby, and for current Ruby programmers who want to challenge their understanding and increase their mastery of the language.

]]> 446 David Flanagan 0596516177 Jack 0 4.04 2008
author: David Flanagan
name: Jack
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/12/13
shelves: currently-reading, non-fiction
review:

]]> 25394445
The third instalment of Nigel Slater’s classic Kitchen Diaries series, A Year of Good Eating explores the balance and pleasure in eating well throughout the year. The leisurely recipes and kitchen stories of the Diaries are ingeniously interspersed with seasonal sections of quick, weeknight suppers in the style of Nigel’s most recent bestseller Eat. A salmon pie with herb butter sauce or an asparagus and blue cheese tart for when you have time to cook; roasted summer vegetables with sausages or quick baked eggs and greens for when you need to get dinner on the table fast.

With Nigel’s characteristically simple recipes and inspiring writing, this new book will make good eating a joy, every day of the year.]]> 544 Nigel Slater 0007536801 Jack 0 currently-reading, food 4.43 2015
author: Nigel Slater
name: Jack
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/10/19
shelves: currently-reading, food
review:

]]> 10419045
Without fail, every well-run endeavor has involved collaboration . Every real collaboration creates and maintains its own clarity. Every real collaboration has psychological safety. Every real collaboration has fearlessly shared leadership. Every real collaboration has the guts to work for real success. Individuals in teams create value. Every successful team I have ever seen operated as a team . Every successful team I have ever seen had individual professionals behaving professionally. Every successful team I have ever seen knew what success looked like . They made their quest for success visual, they talked about it regularly, their opinions were respected, and their actions were appreciated. Practical collaborative work creates its own rewards, its own psychological safety, its own agency, and its own quality control. Intentional collaboration creates a right environment where all professionals can operate to their highest potential. Professional collaboration abhors defects, hidden issues, and poor communication. In business, we have a choice; we can make things better or we can languish is costly mediocrity. Sometimes the paths to better look blocked by immovable objects, but there are no immovable objects in the universe. Everything has a lever, everything has a button. Collaboration finds the irresistible force. The fact is most businesses today are in the business of making just enough money to sustain their internal waste and maybe a little bit more. They make terrible decisions, build structures that invite bickering and impedance, and bring in new professionals with great promises that have poorly attempted delivery. Most businesses, but not all.]]> 216 Jim Benson 1453802266 Jack 0 3.74 2011
author: Jim Benson
name: Jack
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/01/03
shelves: currently-reading, non-fiction
review:

]]> 12015 311 Iain M. Banks 0553573586 Jack 0 currently-reading, sci-fi 3.86 1994
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Jack
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/17
shelves: currently-reading, sci-fi
review:

]]> 6481280
Strange as it may seem, the grey, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairytale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950's, the magic seemed to be working.

Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, it give the tyranny its happy ending. It's history, it's fiction. It's a comedy of ideas, and a novel about the cost of ideas.

By award-winning (and famously unpredictable) author of The Child That Books Built and Backroom Boys, Red Plenty is as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant - and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.]]> 434 Francis Spufford 0571225233 Jack 0 currently-reading 4.07 2010
author: Francis Spufford
name: Jack
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/07/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 17700661
One of the funniest cookbooks you are ever likely to read. And definitely the sweariest.

For over three years now, Esther Walker has been entertaining foodies with her hilarious Recipe Rifle blog. Charting her progress from bad cook to, well, not-so-bad cook, she is blistering honest about what works, and what doesn’t, in the kitchen. If a recipe works for her, it will probably work for you. If it doesn’t, she will swear quite a lot.

Crammed full of recipes, tips for entertaining, stories of pregnancy and tales of her husband (restaurant critic Giles Coren) coming home drunk, The Bad Cook will make you laugh out loud. It will also make you want to start cooking.]]> 250 Esther Walker 0007515723 Jack 0 currently-reading 3.65 2013
author: Esther Walker
name: Jack
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/03/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]>