Reviews and Comments

A great read on the history of id software (and the huge game industry that it helped blossom), this will go on my list of favorite computing/video game history books. Most of the book is detailed and entertaining, although the ending felt a little abrupt. What I would give for a followup edition with updates on the founders!

A lengthy, expansive overview of myths from around the world. Each one is meant to illustrate parts of the hero's journey. I was expecting more analysis of the hero's journey itself, but this focuses more on the myths themselves.

Had some great moments and anecdotes about Campbell and his life, but I enjoyed Power of Myth more as an interview with him.

The audio version of this book is well worth it. Campbell’s recollection and understanding of myths is impressive, and although I lost him a few times on the discussion of spirituality, overall this interview is inspiring.

A haunting account of the 1665 plague in London, this almost reads like Dante's Inferno or Purgatorio, in which the author takes you on a tour of the world that seems to be falling apart around them.

Reading this in 2020, you'll see many parallels (stay-at-home orders, social distancing, daily numbers, etc), but it's also a small consolation that we live in more modern times and that the mortality rate of COVID19 isn't as bad as the bubonic plague.

Defoe gives us statistics along the way and throughout the year, although having a geographic grasp of each town he mentions would help while reading it. There's also a short tale about a small group of men who escaped the city and went from town-to-town in the countryside. On one hand it's very descriptive and thrilling, but on the other it makes you wonder how he came across the information.

Epic weaving of historical fiction. Definitely some fun parallels to Bitcoin that predate it (a digital currency, cryptography, a circle of people operating under a Japanese psuedonym, etc).

This is now one of my favorite programming books! Not only is it a methodical building-block-approach to learning how ray tracers work, but it's a genuinely good way to familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of a programming language. For myself, I used Go after a year of learning it on the side -- this posed challenges because of its lack of OO inheritance, default/optional arguments, etc., and solving those challenges was equally as fun as implementing the ray tracer itself. The bonus chapters and forum are also a great supplement to the book. Thanks Jamis!