User Profile

For the longest time I snobbed Patricia Highsmith thinking of her as a thriller author, but this novel is outrageously well written. It's incredible that she managed to get this published in 1952, almost 20 years before "Maurice" by E.M. Forster.

The character development, the masterful way we're made to perceive how the feelings develop between the character when they're still so hard to identify clearly... I know exactly what she's talking about, and I still have no idea how she managed to put it into words so well.

A classic of self-help, interesting also as meta-reading. It's obviously cheesy and unashamedly bourgeois, but it does have a few good points.

Guida essenziale a certi criteri di qualità minima dei cataloghi. Non mancano le frecciatine al catalogo SBN per la mancanza di normalizzazione dei dati, che ne penalizza l'usabilità.

Hannah Arendt is spectacular in these four essays. After reading them, I keep going back to these concepts and I find we still have a huge need for them, for example when thinking about civil disobedience and the concepts of violence in the activism against the climate crisis.

Excellent work, but I'm not sure how enjoyable for someone who has not read the book. A good refresher if you have. It's also easy to realise how this screenplay would have been a nightmare for any film producer. Luchino Visconti might have been able to pull it off, but all those different highly visual scenes are a minefield.

I originally read this book in Thai Vegan Kitchen in Helsinki. It's ostensibly about communicating with carnists about veganism, but in reality I'd say it's a book about using direct non-violent communication in personal relations. You can find the same concepts in any book about attachment theory, but Melanie Joy presents it all in a more personal way. Useful also if you often find you have trouble communicating the importance of a belief of yours, for example (in my case) free software or privacy.

A classic, still very instructive. A few parts have not aged well, but most of it remains prescient. For example, Monbiot gave us a simple message: there's no way we can make fast travel environmentally sustainable, we just have to give it up: we can't replace the growth in air travel with an equal growth in trains going at 300+ km/h. Some people still don't get it, even in the environmental movement. And this is just one example which reminded me of this book the other day.

A very enjoyable read which opens a window on much of today's software development. The way Agile is deployed to solve every single problem in the world is an outrageous simplification, but that's what makes it fun.

Quite a useful reference to get a general sense of direction in the field.

A classic of sociology and the study of the commons, which remains captivating and entertaining. Even though the forest ranger is nowadays a mere metaphor of the challenges of administration and regulation, particularly in the area of the commons, I've also learnt a lot about forest management in the USA. The book is packed with figures and concrete data but remains very enjoyable to read.

I'm a broken record on this, but one of my take aways was how important it is for a central bureaucracy to consider the cost of information when working on such a huge space. The passages on the importance of preserving records and local knowledge, and the difficulty of training new rangers, may sound trivial, but I believe they're crucial.

This book has a good premise, but the execution is catastrophically bad. Pages upon pages of bad and unremarkable prose are spent trying to convince us that capitalism doesn't help produce happy relationships: thank you very much. I understand that this might still be news to some people in the USA, but this filler completely destroys the book. A good editor would probably have cut the book in half without losing any substance. If the filler is necessary to give some air of academic value, it could be in endnotes.

The good part of the book is what comes from the author's qualitative research, namely the interviews with people after their relationships ended. There's a lot one can identify with, but which is seldom talked about.

Obviously I've only started the book because I was captivated by the eye candy of the movie, but surprisingly I ended up reading it in one sitting because it was very captivating. There's something for everybody.

«Water is the least favourable condition for life on Arrakis. And remember that growth itself can produce unfavourable conditions unless treated with extreme care.»

Not my favourite Virginia Woolf, to be honest, but you can't avoid reading Orlando. A remarkable play with time.