Photo: The author in front of Lego spaceman mural, Soho, London July 2022
Hello Interoperable readers! And welcome to August 2022. These days I now see August with two faces. As a kid, August would mean an end to summer holiday freedom and a return to school with its rigour on the one hand and beautiful friendships on the other. As an adult, August is the turning point towards autumnal bliss, the final few weeks to hurriedly pack in any unfulfilled summery dreams before the days shorten and the cold returns. I hope you all have a happy August wherever you are. Without further ado, here is the book breakdown for July:
- Project Hail Mary By Andy Weir
I re-visited this one back in February. It's just "my cup of tea." It was just as enjoyable on the second go-round. That is all. (✶✶✶✶1/2) - 1984 by George Orwell
I think the book is part of why I wanted to re-read Project Hail Mary for some unsad time. A dystopian classic, I was never assigned 1984 in High School like many others are. Instead, we were a Brave New World covering class. My first introduction to Orwell was this: Huxley vs. Orwell: The Webcomic, which is an excellent comparison between the two dystopias. To be 100% honest, I found the audiobook a bit hard to follow with my modern, broken attention span, and I turned to this excellent set of Crash Course videos Part 1 & Part 2 give a great overview of the book and stitch things together a bit. (✶✶✶✶1/2) - Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica By Matthew Parker
Ok, this was a neat book and also lovely if you're an audible subscriber as it's included as part of "Audible Plus", so you can save those precious credits for a 30+ hour long history of post-war Germany (is that just me?). This book gave two fascinating, parallel histories: a biography of the Jame Bond creator himself, Ian Fleming, how his time spent in Jamaica shaped his writing, and the history of Jamaica in a time directly after decolonisation and in the dawning years of the Commonwealth of Nations (something even after nearly five years living in the UK I knew embarrassingly little about). I got much more out of this "freebie" book than I expected. (✶✶✶✶) - Born Standing Up By Steve Martin
This one has been on my list since reading So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport, whose title comes from a line in Born Standing Up. For me, Steve Martin has always been on in the background. I feel like The Jerk and the Father of the Bride films were always on TV as a little kid in the 90s. And I must admit I have a soft spot in my heart for Shopgirl (2005), adapted from a novel by and starring Martin. It was great to hear the history of his career in the 70s and early days of Saturday Night Live, where he hosted several times. A tremendous memoir from an immense talent. (✶✶✶✶✶)
Again I fell short of my ambitious five-book goal, but this month was par excellence for its breadth of coverage and for just getting the old brain cogs turning. The only issue? Too many dudes. Too many male authors this year. For August, I have a lineup of hopefully all female authors to top the scales a bit. I've also never been much of a re-reader (or a re-watcher). This project has shown me that it's a-okay to re-read books, even ones I just finished a few months ago. If you have any book recommendations, please don't hesitate to shout! What book have you re-read the most?
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I'm Tyler Dickey, and this is my newsletter Interoperable. In this space, I celebrate my never-ending love for reliable, available, and maintainable systems like RSS and telephony and write about topics that interest me: art, reading, making things, and technology. Please consider subscribing or following me elsewhere on the internet: Website | Instagram | Twitter