User Profile

ssweeny

ssweeny@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 7 months ago

Software engineer from #Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Opinions are my own, not those of my spouse, employer, child, or pets. In fact there are few areas in which we agree.

Interested in #FOSS and #Linux, as well as federated social nonsense like the #Fediverse and #XMPP and #Matrix

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ssweeny's books

Currently Reading

2025 Reading Goal

8% complete! ssweeny has read 2 of 25 books.

reviewed Ragweed by Avi (Tales from Dimwood Forest)

Avi: Ragweed (2000, HarperTrophy) 4 stars

Ragweed, a young country mouse, leaves his family and travels to the big city, where …

Ragweed by Avi

4 stars

Another read with the kiddo. This series has been really fun!

This is a prequel to "Poppy" featuring the adventures of her boyfriend(?) Ragweed as he leaves home in the country and heads to the big city.

I really enjoyed the way the mouse culture in the city was so different. There's a skateboard punk mouse and lots of characters referring to each other as "dude". I may have used my best Bill & Ted impression when reading the dialogue to the kiddo.

Definitely a fun read. There's some tension with local cats that feels at the same time silly and full of real threat.

Spencer Johnson: Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life (2002) 3 stars

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and …

Silly and obvious but there are some good nuggets in there.

3 stars

I can see why this book has the reputation it does. It's very simple and beats you over the head with its main points. If my boss gave me this to read before a giant restructure I'd probably launch it at his head.

That said, some of the bits about overthinking changes and fretting so much over how a change might negatively affect you did resonate with me, and I recognized myself in there, so maybe thinking of this silly tale will help with that.

The whole thing is around 100 pages. Get it from the library, take an hour to read it, try to get from it what you can.

Oh, skip the final "discussion" session. It's short, but it feels like a really bad after-school special about business.

reviewed The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, #1)

Mark Manson: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016, Harper) 3 stars

In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us …

You only have so many to give.

4 stars

The latest in a series of "self-help" style books I've gotten from the library this year.

This one had by far the "loosest" prose. Probably because the author started as a blogger rather than an academic. But this style helped the "anecdote interspersed with lessons learned" pattern that these books tend to use feel less stale.

I do think the overall lesson of "you are mortal and therefore can only give so many fucks, so choose carefully what to give a fuck about" is probably more necessary now than ever and I'm so glad I read this one.