Weasel Words
A Book Log
May
22,
2010
Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts
is the best kind of language tutorial. It is concise, it is opinionated, and it does not condescend.
On the “concise” front, this book weighs in at exactly 100 pages, excluding appendices. In comparison, a generic Beginner’s Guide to Javascript-type book at Amazon might run 500 pages. And it’s not because that 500 page book is “deeper” or has more information; it’s because a lot of tech writers love to pad things out to insane length. I don’t know why, but it’s undeniably true. Fortunately, Crockford wasn’t paid by the pound, and is able to write a short book.
On the opinionated front, boy howdy is he ever. It turns out Crockford has been involved in a number of rows in the Javascript community, and is a contentious, opinionated guy. His opinions are evident in full force here — including, really, the whole concept of the book, which is that he’s only going to talk about the good parts of the language and will only give a few warnings about the bad parts. (Appendix B, though, is all about the Bad Parts. Appendix A is about the Awful Parts.)
As for condescending, the book practically demands that you’re already familiar with functional programming to some degree. If you’re not, the main thing you’ll get out of the book is, “Man, I need to learn something about functional programming.” Crockford spends three pages explaining how closures work in Javascript; he spends a half-page on currying. If your’e familiar with these concepts, this is just about perfect. If not, well, you’ll probably want to get familiar first.
Recommended to people who have been dismissive of JavaScript (though there are fewer of those around these days) and who enjoy functionally-oriented languages like Lisp or modern C#.
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May
22,
2010
Peter Seibel’s Coders at Work
is a series of interviews with famous programmers — Ken Thompson, Donald Knuth, Brendan Eich, Jamie Zawinski, and a bunch of others — wherein Seibel asks them how they think about, and engage in, programming.
As a concept, it’s great. There are all sorts of methodologies and “best practices” that purport to tell you the best way to program, but given that most of them are self-contradictory, it’s useful to see how “great programmers” actually program themselves.
In execution... it’s also great. Seibel is a programmer himself, and knows the right questions to ask. This isn’t biography-fluff like “What did your parents think of your interest in computers?”; it’s about debuggers and designing code and the merits of Lisp, and in general, it’s the conversations that you would want to have with smart programmers if you were yourself a programmer.
If you’re a programmer, highly recommended. If not, I can’t imagine why you’d read it.
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May
22,
2010
So back some years ago, when I was reading the Hornblower books, I got a bit burnt out and left the last three for when I’d appreciate them more. That time arrived with my recent fit of Napoleomania, so C.S. Forester’s Hornblower and the “Atropos”, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, and Hornblower During the Crisis
all got read quickly.
Everything I’ve said in the past about the Hornblower books is still true, and these books were great. Of the three, my favorite was Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies, which sees Horatio in command of Britain’s fleet in the Caribbean, and has a sort of nostalgic, nearly elegiac, feel to it. Because sure, Horatio’s reaching the top of his profession, but he’s also an older man who can’t indulge in the simple pleasures of the sea the way he used to; and, what with the war over, his profession is a much diminished one. After a man has matched himself against Napoleon for his whole career, can it be anything other than a coda to deal with pirates and slavers, even if he is an Admiral?
And speaking of codas, I should mention that Hornblower During the Crisis is actually an unfinished book — Forester died during the writing of it, so halfway through it stops, and gives the author’s outline of how the plot was to have progressed. I wasn’t sure if this would prove satisfactory or frustrating, but I ended up appreciating it. It’s unfortunate that we’ll never get to read the complete book, but the bits that are there are fun and tell a story enough in their own right.
Highly recommended, though of course you’ll want to start with Beat to Quarters.
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May
13,
2010
So downblog a ways, Kate Nepveu recommended Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
as a piece of Napoleonic fiction, so of course I instantly read it.
And having done so, I have to say that it doesn’t quite count as Napoleonic to me. I mean, yes, it takes place around the time of Napoleon, but so do romance novels, and that doesn’t make them Napoleonic. And okay, to be fair, a chunk of this book actually takes place on battlefields with the Army, but even so, it doesn’t quite make the Napoleonic genre cut. Not enough foretop mizzenmasts, maybe.
Leaving Napoleon aside, though, this is an excellent fantasy of manners. In fact, an excerpt from it might almost be used as the definition by example of the genre:
“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange.
Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could.”
My only criticism of the book is that it gets a bet too Faerie-ish, in that Gaiman/Vess way, at some points. But for the most part, it’s a delight. If you like fantasies of manners, you’ll like this. If it’s Napoleon you want, though... well, see my next entry.
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May
5,
2010
Jim C. Hines’ The Stepsister Scheme and The Mermaid’s Madness
sound awful. They’re set in a fairy-tale kingdom, with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White all teaming up to kick ass and take names, Charlie’s Angels-style! Like in Shrek or something!
But that description does them a disservice, because Hines handles them a lot better than that. His fairy tale kingdom has solid world-building, his characters are individual, complex, and psychologically real. The attitude toward the female protagonists is a lot subtler and more feministy than the sort of Lara Croftian “fighting chicks, fuck yeah!” thing you’d picture, and in general, Hines does an excellent job with these books. There’s very little in them that I could really criticize.
Except for one thing: I found them a bit dull. I don’t know why. Objectively speaking, I shouldn’t’ve. They’re light, fast-paced, well-crafted adventure books. And yet, I found myself plodding through both of them and forcing myself to finish. The first book, I figured I’d just read it at the wrong time. But when the same thing happened with the second book, I had to admit that there was something in these books that was failing to grab me.
So, I dunno. Maybe it’ll grab you and you’ll really like them, or maybe they’re somehow just missing that spark of compelling readability. I can’t really recommend them with any particular strength, but there’s nothing in them to disrecommend them, either.
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May
5,
2010
So some time ago, I heard vague news/rumors that the Ultimate Universe comics were going to be cancelled, and would be going out with a storyline called Ultimatum. After a bit of sadness (because Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man has consistently been one of the best comic books out there, and the other Ultimate books have been pretty decent as well), I decided this was great news.
Mainstream superhero comic books do a lot of things well, but the one thing they’ve never managed to pull off is endings. So now here’s a chance for Bendis to wrap up an entire universe in a big event that can actually change things in big, permanent ways. Sweet! Plus, throughout the Ultimate comics (particularly in Bendis’ somewhat retconny Ultimate Origins) there’s been a lot of hinting about the nature and sudden origin of all these superheroes, and it’d make perfect sense for the big finale to tie that all up and provide a thematic unity to the whole run of the comics, tracing superheroes from their sudden rise to their equally sudden end.
Man, that’d be fucking great. Of course, it’s not what we got.
What we got in Jeph Loeb’s Ultimatum (and a bunch of related books that I’m not going into individually here) is: A tidal wave.
Seriously. A tidal wave. It engulfed New York and “destroyed” it, and the heroes had to respond. And I mean, look, I get the combination 9/11 and Katrina motif they’re going for and all, but fundamentally, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t wrap anything up thematically, it’s just a random event.
Which is just as well, because it also turns out not to be an ending. Because, okay, Marvel canceled the Ultimate line... only to introduce the Ultimate Comics line. And this actually less significant than it sounds. Brian Bendis’ Ultimate Comics Spider-Man
picks up exactly where his Ultimate Spider-Man left off. It says issue #1, but it’s loaded with the previous 100+ issues of continuity, including the Ultimatum stuff.
So my verdict on the Ultimatum event is: Meh. It’s just another big crossover event, but a lame one like House of M, not a cool one like Civil War. And everyone quickly stops talking about it and goes back to status quo, which is weird when New York is allegedly destroyed.
But on the other hand, Bendis’ Spider-Man work, whatever the title, remains very good; and Warren Ellis’ Ultimate Comics Iron Man
is one of the best takes on Iron Man I’ve read, even if it seems to violate the continuity of both the inconsistent Card Ultimate Iron Man and the version that originally appeared in The Ultimates. So basically, keep reading everything the Ultimate (Comics) Universe, but don’t expect much from the big event.
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