But after that? I didn’t do much at all until I decided to commit to the Couch-to-5k thing last fall. I haven’t stopped working out since, mixing in everything from more running to strength training to HIIT (gosh that’s painful stuff). Naturally, as an athlete now (riiiightt), I started trying to learn more about effective recovery.

You don’t have to look hard to find endless articles and posts online detailing exactly what kinds of recovery you should be doing, and what types of recovery you should be avoiding. But like a lot of health advice, they can be very contradictory. There’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about not just which types of recovery are effective, but just when and how to best take advantage of them.

Good to Go is Christie Aschwanden’s attempt to parse through all the cruft to find out what recovery methods actually work. She does so in a very conversational, readable way. But this isn’t just a book for folks who like to exercise. Along the way, Aschwanden helps the reader to learn to think more critically about the research and studies that a lot of health advice is based on.

Many of the studies that these results come from, for example, are based on a very small sample size—10 or so people. Other data is far from conclusive, but the results were “marketable” (like research around sports drinks, for example) so they were promoted as more definitive than the data showed.

Sometimes the studies themselves were designed in a way that adhered to pre-existing biases. Take, again, sports drinks. It turns out, what you use as a placebo ends up dramatically impacting the significance of the benefits of drinking something like Gatorade.

When people volunteer for a study to test a new sports drink, they come to it with an expectation that the product will have some performance benefits. Studies use a placebo group to factor out such effects, but a placebo only controls for these expectations when it’s indistinguishable from the real deal. So it’s telling, Cohen says, that studies using plain water for the control group found positive effects, while the ones that used taste-matched placebos didn’t.

Other times, the results of a study get widely spread, but not the context. Ice baths were a good example. It’s a commonly cited recovery method, but it depends quite a bit on context. Turns out, if you’re in the “building phase” (trying to get faster, stronger, etc) it’s probably best to avoid the ice bath. If, however, you want short-term recovery (say, a long run with another soon to follow) then it can be beneficial.

Over and over, Aschwanden breaks down advice being spread without consideration of the size, biases and overall validity of the underlying studies. It’s a good lesson in critical thinking. It is also, likely, a little discouraging to anyone who was hoping to find a foolproof, silver bullet for recovery.

She also takes on fitness trackers and related apps. To be clear, I think there are definite benefits to using those sorts of tools. They can provide good motivation, prompt you towards making better health decisions, and the social aspects can help you stay accountable. But Aschwanden also points out the negatives. If we’re not careful, we can get too tied up in the numbers even if, ultimately, they may only have a loose connection to our overall health.

Her final conclusion on recovery? Ultimately the only thing we can say definitively helps with recovery is sleep (not a surprise if you’ve read Why We Sleep). Other than that, it’s mostly about the placebo effect. If you find something that feels like it’s making a difference for you, then stick with it.

If I’ve learned anything about recovery, it’s that the subjective sense of how it feels is the most important part.

This was not the case at all with And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer.

This book is just…it’s beautiful. The story, as Backman puts it in his opening letter to the read, is “…about memories and about letting go. It’s a love letter and a slow farewell between a man and his grandson, and between a dad and his boy.”

The story takes place both in the grandpa’s head and in real life, though it takes a while for you to be able to properly separate the two. The combination of settings is powerful. It magnifies the confusion, giving us a little glimpse of what the man himself is going through. And by having part of the story take place in the man’s brain, it makes the memories he is losing more concrete to the reader. We see about the people walking past, their faces blurry. We see about the rain that comes down, wiping bits of his memories away with it. We see the dark paths and roads that the old man no longer goes down because he can’t remember what they hold and is worried he won’t find his way back.

Particularly moving are the scenes in the man’s head where he is walking with his wife, who passed away some years ago. She helps him to hold onto what is real, helps to fill in some of his memories, and to assure him it will be alright when he panics about the memories he is losing. His struggle to hold onto his memories of her and his fear of forgetting her and all of the moments that shaped their life together hit me particularly hard.

Backman is an incredible storyteller, and he is able to connect the reader to his characters almost immediately. There is a tenderness and empathy that permeates every word in this story (without ever once being sappy or cheesy). That’s true of everything I’ve read by Backman, and it’s particularly true of this story. Given the personal nature of the story (Backman explains it was written for himself, as he tries to deal with, as he puts it, “saying goodbye to someone who is still here”), I suppose that’s no surprise.

It’s a brisk read. It’s under 100 pages and can be read in one sitting. If you’re like me, will be read in on sitting. Not because it’s a page turner with some big mystery at the end, but because it’s powerful and you will find yourself caring so much about the characters that you can’t let go. Just, maybe don’t read this one in public unless you’re comfortable with folks seeing you cry. I can’t fathom how anyone could make it through this book with dry eyes.

The book started off a bit slow. The first several chapters are pretty foundational and while there were a few nuggets there that were interesting, nothing was really blowing me away. Combine that with a few anecdotes that rubbed me the wrong way and I nearly put the book down.

But once Baker gets into the meat of positioning (starting around chapter 6), the book really takes off. There was so much valuable information here, and some of those most actionable and concrete advice I’ve ever seen on the subject. Baker talked about how to find your positioning, the pros and cons of positioning vertically versus horizontally and how to test your positioning (now and later) to make sure you’re on the right track.

Baker also provides plenty of excellent advice around identifying what it is that you do that provides the most value and whether you’re doing a good job (through positioning and the way you interact) of communicating that to prospective clients. Among the tips there, two stood out in particular. One was to stop and think about what part of your process you most often shorten when the client is pressed on time. If it’s the research and analysis phase, it’s time to rethink your approach a bit. That’s both a critical step and the ability to do it well separates the wheat from the chaff (so to speak).

Another rock solid tip that I’m going to start doing immediately is to record your side of a conversation by setting a phone on your desk when you talk to a client. Baker advises listening back, without hearing what the client is saying, to zero in on how you are presenting yourself: Are you doing too much talking? Are you asking enough questions? Are you agreeing with everything the client says or are you pushing back when appropriate?

As I mentioned before, a few of his analogies and anecdotes rubbed me the wrong way, though as I’ve acknowledged before, that’s a frequent occurrence anytime I’m reading anything around “business” so that could just be me. Ultimately the helpful, actionable insights in the latter parts of the book more than made up for the slow start.

Much of the concepts of the book will be familiar if you’ve already read much about the topic, but Holmes’ presentation of those concepts is often unique and, for me, made me consider familiar ideas in unfamiliar ways.

I absolutely loved her use of the term “mismatches” as a way to consider when an experience doesn’t align with the reality of how a person needs to interact with that experience. An example she gives is trying to order from a menu written in a language you can’t read. That’s a mismatched experience. I’ve already started experimenting with using the term in my own work when I’m helping clients to identify audiences who are getting a subpar, or even unusable, experience from their sites. So far, it seems to be getting the point across better than terminology I’ve used in the past.

Some mismatches may seem minor (like, perhaps, ordering from the menu) but as Holmes points out, they add up fast and can lead to a significant feeling of not belonging:

Mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. They can feel like little moments of exasperation when a technology product doesn’t work the way we think it should. Or they can feel like running into a locked door marked with a big sign that says “keep out.” Both hurt.

The response to these mismatches may be emotional on the part of the person experiencing them, but Holmes is quick to point out that viewing “inclusion” as a “nice thing to do” does it a disservice.

Treating inclusion as a benevolent mission increases the separation between people. Believing that it should prevail simply because it’s the right thing to do is the fastest way to undermine its progress. To its own detriment, inclusion is often categorized as a feel-good activity.

So Holmes tries to be more concrete—both about how businesses benefit from building more inclusive experiences and about the first steps we can take to start improving the inclusivity of the things we create.

She does so with a practicality that is refreshing and encouraging. Trying to design more inclusively, or accessibly, can be intimidating. You want to do the right thing, but you’re worried about messing up what you don’t know. Given the nature of what it means to leave people out, when you do mess up the blowback can be difficult to bear. Holmes advice for building a more inclusive vocabulary applies just as well to starting to design more inclusively in general:

Building a better vocabulary for inclusion starts with improving on the limited one that exists today. Sometimes we will use words that hurt people. What matters most is what we do next.

What happens next is the right question. Mismatch is an entry point, not a conclusion. If you’re expecting something comprehensive, you will be disappointed—there’s a lot more work ahead of you. Holmes doesn’t set out to solve all the problems or give you some checklist to follow to suddenly be more inclusive (though she does give several tangible “to-do’s” at the end of each chapter).

What she does is more important. She gives us a gentle nudge towards thinking more inclusively about what we design and build. More than any checklist, it’s this way of thinking that stands to provide the most significant change in the way our experiences impact people. We’ll never build a perfectly inclusive experience, but we can make changes to the method we use to create to help us eliminate those mismatched experiences one by one, allowing more people to benefit from what we build, and for us to benefit from their participation in the process.

Katherine Arden is one heck of a storyteller and this was a wonderful conclusion to a fantastic trilogy.

Book three picks up moments after the conclusion of the second book and takes off at a tremendous pace that doesn’t really ever let up.

Vasya continues to be one of my favorite characters of fiction in the last several years. Here we see her finally coming into her own. She’s slowly become more confident and powerful over the course of the series, and here, finally, is the big payoff. As much as she has gone through in the previous two books, it feels like nothing compared to the events of this finale. She’s beaten by a mob, locked in a cage to be burned, beaten again (a few times)—and all of that is in the first third or so of the book.

But all of that terrible chaos is what helps her to finally really accept who she is and what she’s capable of without apology. Her family, for their part, comes to terms with it at last as well.

While Vasya is the center of the story, there’s a rich cast of supporting characters. Sasha, Olga, Medved, Dmitrii, Konstantin, Morozko—they’re all back along with plenty of new faces mixed in. Few, if any, of them could be said to be shallow or one-dimensional. Even the villians are complex, well-rounded characters that are conflicted in their own ways.

Much of this entire series, really, is devoted to that: characters who are conflicted about who they are and the role they’re meant to play. Vasya, of course. But also Sasha, torn between his life as a monk and his love for his sister, a witch. Olga, torn between that same love for Vasya and her position of status. Konstantin, torn between the pioutous priest he presents to the public and his cravings for power that truly rule his actions. That internal conflict drives them all. It’s how they react to it that differentiates them most significantly.

Throughout the series, Arden does such a masterful job of weaving authentic historical events and contexts alongside the more fantastical elements. The epic conclusion (epic is fitting here) takes place at the very real Battle of Kulikovo, a fitting setting that she had planned to use for the ending from the very beginning. Arden’s beautiful writing and knowledge of medieval Russia creates a rich backdrop, and also helps to ground what is a very fantastical story.

The ending is not entirely happy, which in this case is good. A perfectly happy ending would have felt misplaced. Instead the end is bittersweet, and very satisfying.

While the trilogy has come to an end, I would be more than happy to read more of these characters, or, at least, stories with the same rich, mythological setting. Whatever Arden writes next, I’ll be reading it as soon as it comes out.

Tara was one of 7 children, raised in rural Idaho, with a father who was a Mormon survivalist and a mother who, while occasionally would show signs of not being entirely on board with some of his actions, was more or less willing to go along with it.

They were “homeschooled” (if you were to ask her parents), but it’s clear from Tara’s telling that there was precious little “schooling”. She hasn’t heard of the Holocaust before an embarrassing sequence in college. She has to teach herself algebra, geometry, and trigonometry as part of her self-studying to prep for the ACT. Much more of her time is spent helping her mother and father with their respective businesses than doing anything resembling school.

While the book does tell the story of how Tara eventually made her way to college, and even to ultimately earning a doctorate from Cambridge University, it really centers around relationships. At the beginning of the book, her relationship with her father dominates the story. For awhile her brother Tyler is the focus. Later it’s her relationship with her mom, with her brother Shawn, with her sister Audrey.

That they dominate a lot of the narrative isn’t a surprise. Tara was surrounded by strong, frequently abusive, personalities and they shaped her perception of herself and the world around her. It isn’t until much later in her life, while at Brigham Young University, that she slowly starts to find her own voice.

Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.

I mentioned those relationships were often abusive, which is the understatement of the century. Her father set the tone, with his extreme beliefs and temperament (Tara suspects he may be bipolar, her parents of course dispute this). He is frequently angry, irrational, and judging of, well, everyone around him. He often complains about the immodest attire of women in church. He despises and distrusts the government. He firmly believes doomsday is coming and so he spends much of his time preparing for it by storing goods, guns, and ammo.

And he despises the healthcare system. To the extent that when his wife is severely injured in a car accident, when his son is severely burnt, when he himself is severely burnt later on—the hospital is never considered an option. His rationale that “God will do all the healing they need” is not so much as an expression of his faith as it is a misunderstanding of it.

As jarring as the early stories in the book are, they pale in comparison to what happens as Tara gets older. Her brother (“Shawn” in the book) is abusive physically and mentally. Her interactions with him are truly horrific, and it’s beyond gut-wrenching hearing the impact they had on her self-worth. There was one scene in particular that I don’t really want to detail because it’s incredibly upsetting. But it happens in front of her boyfriend. Tara talked about how she panicked. Not because it was happening to her, but because it was happening in front of her boyfriend. Because, as she put it:

He could not know that for all my pretenses—my makeup, my new clothes, my china place settings—this is who I was.

I don’t know the effect that has here, in my abbreviated review, but in the context of the book it was one of many times where I had to pause, had to set the book down for a minute just to process and deal with the gravity of it all.

She gets very little help from her family. The majority of her family, instead of dealing with it, look the other way and make excuses. Tara takes awhile to confront it herself, something far from surprising given the situation.

When she finally does confront everything head-on, when she finds her own voice and stands up to her dad and to Shawn, she pays the price of having a relationship with her family. Only a couple remain in touch from the sounds of it. It’s easy for us on the outside to feel that perhaps that’s the best thing after all given the horrors she went through, but as Tara points out, it’s never that easy when it’s your family.

Tara seems to be writing this book for herself as much as anyone else and you see the impact abuse had on her, the way she struggles with her confidence and self-worth and the way she grapples with coming to terms with the toxic relationships with people she cared deeply about.

The most common criticism I’ve seen of the book is that it can’t possibly be true. There is so much that happened to Tara. How could that much bad happen? How could someone with no education manage to score well enough on her ACT to get to BYU? How could she go on to get a doctorate? In the context of today, with the wide dissemination of misinformation and examples of other popular memoirs exaggerating facts, I suppose that’s fair to some extent.

Her parents have stated that the book is not accurate, as you would fully expect given the terrible stories the book tells.

But two brothers also are on record as having said that while their exact recollection of some of the stories differs from Tara’s, they felt the book accurately depicted Tara’s upbringing. Doug, an ex of Tara’s who is mentioned quite a bit later in the book, has also written that Tara’s book lines up with his experience with her family as well.

In other words, there’s enough smoke here that there must be something to the fire. Tara is also incredibly transparent about where her telling differs from that of family members. The book is peppered with footnotes where bits and pieces of stories are contradicted by the family members she still has an active relationship with. She even has a whole final section of the book detailing how her accounts of some scenarios differ from what others remember.

And, perhaps, some of the memories aren’t entirely accurate. Who of us could claim to have 100% fidelity of our memories? Or tell stories of the people in our lives without perhaps missing some details? Tara’s very open in pointing out that her memories likely aren’t 100% correct. In an interview after the book’s publication, Tara addressed the criticism:

Everyone knows that human memory is fallible and there are problems with it. In my book, I acknowledge that by consulting other people, by having footnotes when there were major disagreements or things I couldn’t reconcile, and by trying to acknowledge why certain narratives persist and where they come from. But I think sometimes people use the basic fact of the fallibility of human memory to try and undermine other people’s sense of reality and their trust in their own perception, and that has a lot more to do with power than with the limitations of memory. It’s a way to control other people by saying ‘my memory is the truth and yours isn’t valid.’

The criticism leaves me with a similar feeling to what I had after reading The Road of Lost Innocence and finding out that some argued the author was lying. That is to say, I almost want the story to be a fake. I want to find out I was duped. As inspiring as it is that she was able to overcome, what she went through and what she still is going through is awful and I don’t want it to be true. That doesn’t seem to me to be the case here, however.

I had expected, knowing little about the book before picking it up, for something dealing with a more traditional definition of “education”. But what Tara wrote is more powerful and more important. Education, as Tara sees it, is about self-discovery and transformation. It’s about finding your own voice amidst the cacophony of voices that surround you.

It had played out when, for reasons I don’t understand, I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place.

Until that moment she had always been there. No matter how much I appeared to have changed—how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance—I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house.

That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self.

You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal.

I call it an education.

Scalzi is one of those author’s who very rarely, if ever, steers me wrong. He’s got a knack for writing gripping, fast-paced novels that are wildly entertaining from start to finish and Head On fits the bill perfectly.

It’s the second book (well, maybe the third if you include the short story prequel) in this world were a number of the population has been struck by “Haden’s Syndrome”—a disease that leaves people fully awake, but completely unable to move or react to any outside stimuli. So instead, Hadens (as the victims are called) navigate the world in personal robots called threeps.

That’s the backdrop for another fun “whodunnit” following Chris Shane, the child celebrity who now works as a rookie at the FBI. Honestly, it’s as much (if not more so) a murder mystery as it is a science fiction book.

What separates it from similar books is Scalzi’s willingness to use threeps and Haden’s sufferers as a way to explore how culture responds to disabilities and minorities. Throughout the book, you see that there are very few ways in which the Haden’s have the upper hand. Society tends to have them a little lower on the totem pole than folks without the disease both through obvious and subtle biases (like the way folks bump into threeps all the time while walking). In the few areas that Haden’s survivors do have the upper hand, people without Haden’s are starting to use the technology to better themselves. On the surface, it’s not a big issue, but as Scalzi deftly explores, you begin to see the way that impacts Haden’s sense of being as well as their wallets.

As with everything I’ve ever read by Scalzi, he manages to make you think about these things without you ever really realizing it. He never gets heavy-handed—the conversation and action seamlessly take you through these discussions as part of the action.

As I mentioned, it’s book two in this world, but it stands alone pretty well. You don’t need to read Lock In to enjoy Head On, though I’d argue you’ll enjoy the characters and world a bit more if you do. Head On ends up being everything you’d expect from Scalzi: entertaining and gripping with much more to think over than it first seems.

The Real World of Technology is based on, and expands on, a series of lectures that Ursula gave in 1989 about technology’s impact on the “real world”—the societal, political and ethical considerations that are so commonly overlooked.

It’s not a book for the faint of heart. The style is fairly academic and as much as I enjoyed it, I had to really slow down to fully absorb this one. In fact, I made it a point to listen to the lectures during my drives while reading the book to get the content from another angle. In retrospect, it was a really good choice. Listening to Ursula’s lectures hammered home what I was reading and, in some cases, registered with me a bit more clearly.

But the work is absolutely worth it—there are so many important concepts discussed that all too frequently go overlooked until it’s too late and we’re stuck dealing with the fallout.

She powerfully makes the case that you cannot consider technology in isolation and that technology itself can never be neutral because it is shaped by the environment around it:

What needs to be emphasized is that technologies are developed and used within a particular social, economic, and political context. They arise out of a social structure, they are grafted on to it, and they may reinforce or destroy it in ways that are neither forseen nor forseeable.

She tackles the way we repeatedly (and mistakenly) place our trust in technology over people (a timely word of caution given today’s propensity to solve problems with an algorithm):

Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions…..The notion that maybe technology constitutes a source of problems and grievances and people might be looked up on as a source of solutions has very rarely entered public policy or even public consciousness.

All of this, and more, feeds into her primary narrative: that technology has real world ramifications and we have not given enough consideration to what that fallout is.

It’s a powerful warning that we didn’t pay enough attention to when she presented it in 1989, and one that feels critical to pay attention to today.

It shows. This is a brutal novel, with some absolutely terrible scenes that will be uncomfortable for everyone, and almost certainly too much for some.

Technically, The Underground Railroad is science-fiction. The railroad in the book is an actual subway, and as you move from stop to stop, each stop has subtle indications that time may have leaped forward a bit as well. But that aspect of the story is very subdued. Like the doors in Exit West, the fantastical nature of the railroad serves as a device to let Colson get his characters to the next destination so that he can explore racism through a variety of lenses.

The story starts on a plantation, where we meet Cora and the other characters that will drive the story forward. This setting, in particular, is evidence of the incredible amount of research that went into the book. Colson’s presentation of plantation life goes beyond the shallow perspective we often get. He explores what a complete lack of power and humanity does to those enslaved, and how that causes many of the slaves to treat each other poorly as well—desperate to be able to assert some sort of control or to be able to call something theirs. It’s chilling and heartwrenching. It also sets up the mystery of Cora’s mother (when we finally find out her story late in the novel, it’s a significant and poignant moment).

When Cora eventually runs away with another slave named Ceaser, we’re moved first to South Carolina. South Carolina serves as our window into governmental attempts to intervene with race, and we quickly see just how awful their attempts are.

Each successive stop provides a different view. South Carolina explores government intervention. North Carolina is like a scene from a horror movie as it deals with white supremacy. Indiana provides a little bit of a respite as we see how the characters (nearly all former slaves) attempt to reclaim their lives and their humanity. But even Indiana isn’t as gentle as it first seems.

Without spoiling the ending, I will say that it ends in the only way a book like this could end. There’s hope, in the end, but it’s a heavy hope that is buoyed by the reality that the scars of Cora’s experience (and more generally, racism) run deep and linger on.

Whitehead’s writing is beautiful and poignant. I’ve seen lesser books on difficult subjects struggle with finding the right balance between telling their story without belaboring their message. Whitehead doesn’t have a problem with that. You’re absorbed in the story from the beginning and you can’t help but see all the painful parallels to what is still happening today.

The railroad in the book doesn’t ever stop in today’s day and age, but you end up finding your way there nonetheless.

In the novel, magical doors appear that can transport people from one place to the next. The doors pop up at random. It’s never clear whether a door will be safe or who will be waiting on the other end. In this way, the doors work pretty well as a symbolic representation of the reality of refugees fleeing their homeland in search of something better.

I kept thinking about The Lightless Sky and Gulwali’s accounts of how harrowing and risky the methods of passage were. People try to take advantage of the refugees, lie to them, cheat them—you never know if in fact the doors of opportunity that open are going to lead to something better or not. The magical doors in Exit West share a similar uncertainty. I have heard a few folks struggle with the idea of a magical element being introduced into a novel otherwise devoid of anything fantastical, but it didn’t bother me. The magic of the doors is subdued: you get the sense they exist perhaps entirely so that Hamid can fast-forward past the journey and focus on what happens after the journey is done.

That’s the core of the story: the day-to-day reality of migrants. It’s so easy for us to overlook the incredible burden of trying to make a new home in a place where you are unwelcome and unwanted, but we see it here.

Saeed and Nadia’s relationship starts out strong and sensual. But with each escape, they are forced to leave people they care about behind, as well as parts of themselves. As Hamid poignantly writes, “..when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.”

As these relationships fade into the past, and Saeed and Nadia are surrounded by hate from others, their own relationship begins to wither and deteriorate as well. When all you’re faced with is hate, it becomes harder and harder to love.

Long story short: this novel had all the makings of an incredibly poignant and powerful story. Unfortunately for me, the story never quite hits those lofty expectations.

I struggled to connect with the characters. They never felt fully fleshed out. As a result, there were many moments where rationally I recognized should be powerful, but emotionally they didn’t register much.

I suspect this was not an issue of the characters themselves and how they were portrayed, but rather a symptom of a bigger issue I struggled with: the writing style. Hamid loves to use run-on sentences. A lot. I’ve read many books where the author makes some sort of stylistic decision like this (Cormac McCarthy strips out punctuation, José Saramago’s Blindness features characters with no names, etc) and most of the time I find after a few pages I stop noticing as it fades into the story.

That never happened for me with Exit West. Occasionally the style worked. At its best, these run-on sentences create a breathless stream of thought that is almost lyrical. But for the most part, the style distracted me from the story. The run-on sentences are used so often and I kept finding myself being pulled back out of the story.

This won’t bother many people, and that’s good. The style didn’t work for me, but your mileage may vary.

If you do the style distracting as well, I would suggest reading The Lightless Sky for a powerful true account of the challenges faced by refugees.

You start out with your first impression. Ove is a grumpy 59-year-old man. He’s rude and annoyed by pretty much anything and anybody. His grumpiness is played to comedic effect over and over. He battles a stray cat, the dog who keeps peeing on his deck, the people parking where they shouldn’t be, and the driver backing into his mailbox because he doesn’t know how to properly back up a trailer—just to name a few. He’s a curmudgeon who seems to finds the world annoying.

But as you read, you learn a bit more about Ove. And as you do, you find out there’s much more to him than meets the eye. He doesn’t get annoyed for the sake of being annoyed. He’s annoyed because he grew up with clearly defined principles instilled in him at a young age. As he’s grown older, he sees a world that doesn’t always value those same principles. When he gets upset about people driving their car by the residential houses despite a sign saying not to do exactly that, he’s not just upset just by the act; he’s upset that no one seems to understand why it upsets him.

You start to learn about his past and you come to realize his story is more connected to the majority of the supporting characters than you first assume. You learn that there’s a great deal of good in him, underneath his rough exterior.

The flashbacks help to fill in a lot of context, but the present is just as important. Most notably, the changes brought upon when Parvaneh, an pregnant Iranian immigrant, moves in next door with her husband and their two daughters. Parvaneh and Ove’s interactions are some of my favorite parts of the book. Parvaneh is never fooled by his act. She refuses to allow Ove to dismiss her, and over time she and her two daughters (Ove never really grows fond of her husband) melt away a lot of the hardness and depression that had settled over him.

And as Ove warms up to them, we warm up to him.

The story bounces back and forth between making you laugh and punching you right in the emotions. It teaches that there’s more to a person than what you see at first glance.

It also teaches you the power of not just talking, but acting. As Ove at one point states:

Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say.

It’s reflected in the way Ove acts towards others. His comments are off-key, but his behavior is sincere. He puts up a fuss, but throughout the book, he is there when other people need him to be. His words may be what leads to your first impression, but his actions are what end up defining him.

I think that’s why Parvaneh ends up gaining so much of Ove’s respect. She never tries to help Ove with some sort of a dramatic speech and she never lets what Ove says drown out what Ove does. She, too, seems to value what people do over what people say. The little comments, his gruff tone of voice—those things don’t phase her. They amuse her because she seems to recognize that there’s more to him. She never hesitates to admonish him if he says something out of line, but the only times she ever really lets loose on Ove is when his actions themselves have gone too far.

The risk in emphasizing the power of actions is that the power words can have may be overlooked. But I would argue that’s not the case here. One of the most closely explored relationships, we learn, was destroyed in no small part because of what was said. It’s a good reminder that what we say has power too.

The book has apparently sold remarkably well, something that appears to have surprised just about everyone involved in the publication process. I don’t think it’s that hard to see why, though. Ove, as we discover, is a man with a good heart who feels lonely and out of place. I think all of us can relate to that on some level.

The story is simply told, and even a little familiar at times, but also surprisingly poignant.

I’m so glad I did. Lonesome Dove sucks you in, but not in the way many modern novels do. The book follows a cattle run from Texas to Montana, set shortly after the Civil War. It’s an epic setting, but the book is much more character-driven than it is plot-driven.

The characters are so remarkably vivid, and not just the primary ones. There’s a rich cast of characters who get detailed backstories, and we spend time with most of them as a point-of-view character for at least a chapter or two. The result is you end up feeling invested, whether good or bad, in the fates of them all.

McMurtry decided to ignore the “romanticized” version of the west that so many Western novels at the time appeared to readily embrace. He wanted to write the “anti-western” (as he put it) and paint his characters and their behavior as it really was. Whether he succeeded or not depends on who you talk to and how deeply you consider the characters.

There’s still a bit of the romantic western in play—Gus, in particular, has a bit of a mythic aura. But the characters are flawed, often deeply. They’re emotionally stunted. They say and do things that make you cringe. As McMurtry put it later to one reporter “Would you want to live with these men?”

A lot of this is explored through the role of Newt, the youngest in the company. McMurtry has stated that Newt could be thought of as “the lonesome dove” and he acts as a bit of a stand-in for us, the readers. At the start, young Newt looks up to so many of the men in the company, idolizing them–viewing them through that mythic lens. The cattle drive itself is also viewed with excitement and general romance. But as the book goes on and tragedy after tragedy strikes, he becomes increasingly disenchanted with it all. By the end, he is left bitter and angry. The drive was dangerous with real-world consequences he hadn’t considered. Many of his heroes are dead, and those that aren’t have disappointed him as their veneer has worn off and he’s seen how very flawed they are.

That’s the strength of this novel: the characters. They surprise you, they upset you, they make you cry. You get attached to them and every failure along the journey—every loss—is felt all the more deeply. Even after 850 or so pages, I still found myself wishing I could have more time with them.

Their stories don’t end the way you think they will. Some characters are abruptly killed off in ways that seems almost insulting to the level of importance they seemed to carry to the novel. Many of the missions that characters embark on end up failing unspectacularly. You keep thinking you know where this is going, but it never really does. The results for many characters and plotlines aren’t what you expect, but it’s much closer to what real life would be: real life doesn’t always get the Hollywood ending.

There’s not a lot of action. It’s very safe to say that the book is much more character-driven than it is plot-driven. When you do stumble on an action scene, it makes them stand-out even more. Scenes like Gus being pinned down behind his horse, outnumbered five to one or the bear facing off against the bull keep you breathless and are unforgettable.

Since seeing it on Gay’s list, I’ve been thinking about why it made her list. It’s a historical novel set shortly after the civil war, and McMurtry makes no attempt to pretend conditions were better than they were for anyone involved. Women are mostly treated poorly as are black people. The men in the cattle herding company constantly worry about Native Americans and talk disparagingly of them as well as of Mexicans.

But instead of ignoring the issues, McMurtry takes numerous opportunities to explore them through various different lenses. He builds characters like Elmira, Janey, Clara (a particularly strong character) and Deets that buck the stereotypes the other characters have. The effect is often comedic as other characters are at times very visibily uncomfortable when confronted with these people who don’t match their worldview at all. The book explores the consequences of the way Native Americans were viewed and treated, often through the voice of Gus. McMurtry doesn’t provide any clear-cut statements, but he also refuses to let the reader ignore the ugliness of it all.

I could go on and on about this book and all the different themes, the different characters and the different thoughts and emotions it provoked, but I’m already beginning to ramble. Suffice it to say I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will be returning to it again in the future.

So whenever a new technology emerges, we should ask: Who will win and who will lose out as a result?

Sara’s book is all about this exact idea. She looks at the technology landscape asking this question, and the answer she gets isn’t a good one. We’re building technology for people like us, and most of the time in this community, that means building for young, white males. And we’re doing this without thinking about the consequences.

But when we start looking at them together, a clear pattern emerges: an industry that is willing to invest plenty of resources in chasing “delight” and “disruption”, but that hasn’t stopped to think about who’s being served by its products, and who’s being left behind, alienated, or insulted.

This book is an uncomfortable read, and it should be. It’s painful to hold up the mirror and see just how badly we’re falling short. But it’s so important that we do. Technology drives so much of our day to day lives, and its reach is only expanding. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a niche thing—it’s something that impacts everyone around the world every single day.

I love that Sara very early points the finger at us, the people building technology, and then she never lets it waver. She doesn’t let us hide behind the code or the math in the algorithms we build. Her focus is on the human aspect, as it should be. We’re the ones who need to work to ensure that we’re considering different viewpoints and testing our work through these different lenses.

The book also builds very nicely from chapter to chapter. She progresses from seemingly basic considerations—like form fields—in the early chapters to complex algorithms in the later ones. Throughout, there are numerous examples of situations where people were left out by the decisions that we made on their behalf, whether or not we realized it.

She also does a good job of zeroing on some core beliefs in our field that contribute to the mess we’re in: how the idea of a separate “technology industry” lets us avoid the checks and balances for established fields, how our obsession with engagement drives us to make the wrong decisions for the people using our products, and how the focus on collecting and selling people’s data counters inclusivity.

Sara isn’t anti-technology. She just recognizes how important technology has become, and the power of the decisions we make.

Every form field, every default setting, every push notification, affects people. Every detail can add to the culture we want—can make people a little safer, a little calmer, a little more hopeful.

My own love of technology is because of this reach she describes. It’s so incredible that what we build can be used by people all around the world, in various different walks of life. I want it to work for everyone. Taking the time to read Sara’s book is a good way for anyone to get started in making that a reality.

Val’s book is about how we change that. It’s about how we can make animations that are effective, not just pretty to look at. And it’s about how we make sure that animation is giving the serious attention it should be. Far from being merely eye-candy, Val explains how animation can be a powerful tool if applied correctly. Animation can help with brand consistency, storytelling, providing feedback, improving perceived performance and more.

The idea of animation promoting brand consistency, in particular, was interesting to me. People interact with companies through a constellation of experiences today. It’s not always easy to provide consistency across different platforms and systems while also taking advantage of the unique characteristics they have. Consistent animation becomes a way you can subtly make these different experiences still feel familiar.

Throughout the entire book, Val provides practical, real-world advice about how to bring it back to your team and your workflow. She explains techniques like prototyping, sketching, animation style guides without ever dictating one approach over another. Instead, she takes the time to lay out what each tool is good for, and what it’s not. It’s an effective method of teaching. By the time you’ve finished the book, you have more than one person’s opinion—you have a framework for making your own decisions about what will work best for your situation.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who knows me, I particularly enjoyed all the information about how animation plays into perceived performance. I was also happy to see Val dedicated an entire chapter to making sure those animations are accessible and inclusive.

Val is one of a handful of people I know of who are really pushing animation forward on the web. She’s done an incredible amount of work and research around not just designing and building animation online, but doing it effectively. We’re all lucky that she took the time to turn that knowledge into this practical and comprehensive book.

What followed was a decade’s long explanation of the horrors and struggles they faced in North Korea. The promises that turned out to be lies. The constant brainwashing. The realization that as Koreans from Japan, they were still considered the lowest of the low. The corruption and abuse.

I’ve seen a few people wondering how true the story is. If you search for Masaji, you’ll find virtually no information (though you’ll see in the book there is a perfectly good reason for why he may chose to write under a different name). If it’s a fake, though, it’s an incredibly well-researched one.

I can’t blame folks for wondering if it’s true, maybe even hoping it isn’t. It would be much easier if we could pretend this isn’t real. It’s difficult reading, on an emotional level, about the horrible conditions they faced on a day to day basis. Sometimes a story is about overcoming the odds to accomplish something incredible. In this case, survival itself is the accomplishment.

If you’re looking for something uplifting, you won’t find it here. The accounts of what he and his wife and kids dealt with broke my heart over and over again. And there’s no happy ending. At the end of it all, I was left furious and hurting.

I won’t blame anyone for passing on this book. It’s emotionally challenging from the first page to the last sentence. But it’s also important. When we don’t expose ourselves to the challenges faced by people in different situations from our own, we risk viewing the world through our own myopic lens. And when you read stories like this one, you can’t help but feel we could all use a little bit more perspective and empathy.

Heydon’s book doesn’t attempt to teach you everything you need to know about accessibility. It does something more important: it teaches you how to think about building inclusivity into your application throughout the process of designing and building it.

Instead of walking you through a checklist of what to do for each of the various impairments users may have to battle, the book walks you through building different components. For example, there’s a section where it walks through marking up a blog post. Sounds simple, but there’s a lot of thought and care being applied to ensure that the post is accessible: the markup used, how screen readers will interact with the post, transcripts for videos, link labels, reading level and more. As a result, you learn to think critically what you’re building and how different people will want to use it.

I have a few minor nitpicks from some of the early performance recommendations, though to be fair the book came out in 2016 and I’m not sure how many of my critiques would’ve been applicable then. They are, also, minor. Nothing he states there is wrong, just a few things that are a bit less than ideal.

That minor nit aside, Inclusive Design Patterns is a fantastic resource for any developer—and this should be all of us—who wants to build a web that can be used by everyone.

One last parting shot, I have to note the quality of the physical book itself. I love a beautifully crafted hardcover and Smashing did a great job with this one.

Giulia is fascinated by our gut, and all the awkward…err…outputs it can produce. She explains how our digestive system works, and why it’s so important to understand what it’s doing. And she does it all with an infectious level of enthusiasm and plenty of laughter. The illustrations, created by her sister, are light and fun, as are her explanations. It’s easy to see how a book about a critical system of the human body could get very dry, very quick. But Giulia never takes herself too seriously, instead choosing to write in a style that is very friendly and easy to digest (no pun intended).

She’s also very practical. As she discusses each function of the gut and what causes things like constipation or bad breathe, she also spends time bringing those ideas back down to actionable advice: if this is something you battle with, here are the things you should try.

At times I wouldn’t have minded a little more technical detail, but that’s nitpicking. She never fails to present the concepts themselves in understandable form—and at the end up of the day, that’s more important than the little trivia bits that surround it.

Our understanding of just what sleep does, as Walker explains, is a relatively recent discovery which is probably why it doesn’t get anywhere near the amount of attention it deserves. As Walker laments, we are taught in school about eating healthy and about exercise, but not about proper sleep habits which is every bit as important. Sleep, on the surface, may seem self-explanatory, but it turns out we do a lot of things (some obvious, some not) that are just plain terrible for our sleep quality. A little education would go a long way, and even over the course of this book, I would be surprised if readers didn’t start to alter their habits (I know I did).

Walker may be passionate about sleep, but he’s also practical. He recognizes that the challenge of fixing the western world’s sleep problem isn’t trivial. There are things we can try to do individually (he provides a full list at the end, as well as additional ideas throughout the book), but there are also broader issues with the way businesses are run, the way schools are run and more.

Because of our underappreciation for sleep, our society is very resistant to these changes. One clear example is the number of people who claim that they only need a few hours of sleep. The numbers show that in actuality, only a fraction of a percent of people truly can operate on less sleep. Everyone else is limiting their emotional stability, mental fortitude, and physical health without realizing it.

He does present some possible solutions but also recognizes that these won’t be easy changes to make. He does provide some examples that offer a glimmer of hope, though. Denmark paying worker compensation to women who developed breast cancer after night-shift work. Aetna providing bonuses to employees based on sleep-tracking data. NASA offering napping time as a way to improve both alertness and on-the-job performance.

Change can happen, even if the examples are too far and few between at the moment. Arming people with the benefits of sleep and the understanding of how sleep works is a great first step, and that’s exactly what this book accomplishes in an engaging and approachable way.