Reading List

Although almost no one actually reads this blog, I'm going to start taking note here of what I've been reading. At least it will give me a chance to take stock of my reading time, of which I never have enough. My reading could best be grouped into two categories: technical papers, articles and books running the gamut of computer science topics, and everything else. The former I typically read during my lunch hour, an old anti-social habit that I don't think I'll ever break, while the latter I try to find time for when I can, typically at night, but also during marathon sessions on vacation at Cape Cod during the summer.

One summer selection was V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River. As a (purely hypothetical) regular reader of the blog might deduce, I'm exceedingly fond of Joseph Conrad. If the brooding prose of this book is any indication, Naipaul is the modern equivalent. The story is semi-autobiographical, and has a specific historical context, but like Heart of Darkness, there is just enough of a mist around the edges to allow both tales to dissolve the bonds that tie them to a particular time and place: The name "Africa" appears once in Conrad's story, and only in a list of continents. The name "Congo" appears not at all. Similarly, Naipaul never names the nation whose fate drives the story, nor its nominal leader, the "Big Man".

The resulting meditations on the nature of man thus take on a universality that I find quite appealing. The prose is brooding, as I said before, in the best possible sense: heavy and thoughtful, but only because the subject demands it.

Highly recommended.

On the CS end, I was thrilled to discover the collected notes of Edsger W. Dijkstra. The breadth of his interest in "Computing Science" is matched only by the strength of his opinions, resulting in forceful insights on a broad range of topics. From what I've read so far, I can particularly commend:

"My recollections of operating system design"

and

"Computing Science: Achievements and Challenges"