Books

2024 in Review, Part 1: Books

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

I read 114 books last year, which was just over my goal of two per week. This includes audio books, e-books and classic paper books, as I usually read at least one of each at any given time.

Five Favorites

French Books

This was the year I completed the Duolingo French course, and found I was able to read more French books in their original language.

During the summer, I read Les Vacances Du Petit Nicolas, which is still as funny as I remember it being when it was read to us as kids in summer camp some 40+ years ago (in German translation).

As a fan of Gaston Lagaffe (Viggo in Norwegian), I was excited to get my hands on a brand-new book, Le Retour de Lagaffe, which is entirely in the spirit of the old Franquin books, and clearly made with love and adoration for the old master.

And after re-reading all the Tintin books over the past year (alas, in English), I’m excited to have Les vrais secrets de La Licorne on my to-read pile for 2025, courtesy of my sister who really came through for my Christmas present. I was afraid the book would be out of print, but she managed to find a well-used copy on the internet.

Image ~ ~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Conscious Capitalism! Liberating The Heroic Spirit Of Business!

This is a book that’s sold at Whole Foods, a local grocery store with a thin veneer of green, organic lifestyle and ridiculous prices. To understand why people fall for this stuff is to understand the American marketing machine.

Algorithms

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Flashback to my time at university. The Sedgewick was the most popular algorithms book among students, being both cheaper and translated to German. Myself, I was using the CLRS Introduction to Algoritms.

This book was found when we were rummaging through stuff that was going to be thrown away at work, and I couldn’t let that happen. I could have used it last week when I was implementing patricia tries. Why is there no good C implementation of them on the ‘net? Anyhow, the question of how to delete an element from a patricia trie isn’t addressed in Sedgewick, so it wouldn’t have helped. I found out, so it wasn’t important, but still, you look up one thing in a classic like this and it’s not in there? How sad.

I am reading…

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Stardust, by Neil Gaiman.

I just finished the book, and like all good books it went by far too quickly. I highly recommend it. In fact, I recommend all of Gaiman’s books. The story is set in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign, and the young Tristram Thorn sets out into the mystical Land of Faerie to find a fallen star for his loved one. The language is beautiful, it’s a book you want to read aloud to somebody.

I am reading…

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Last week I finished dogs of riga, the second book in the Kurt Wallander series. Like the previous two books I read from Henning Mankell, it is an excellent crime novel. This time it plays in the early 90s, times of change in Latvia where Wallander is sent to investigate a murder. I’m reading this in norwegian, to improve my working vocabulary, and it’s working out quite nicely. It’s apparently better to read it in swedish, though. Oh, well…

Yesterday I finished another classic, the lonelyness of the long-distance runner. It’s a short story, and was apparently hailed because it’s an early example of literature from a working-class perspective. I’m not sure it’s such an important book today. The narrative is interesting, though, it’s one long monologue that the main character has while he’s running.

Currently Reading: Neverwhere

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman is definitely among the top 3 books I’ve read this year.

Just as in American Gods, Gaiman invents a whole society that’s right before our eyes but that we cannot see any more. This time they are not forgotten gods, but an underground “London Below”, a society living under London, in abandoned subway stations, WW2 tunnels and abandoned places. I’m two thirds through the book, and I want to savour every page of it. Next on the reading list: Stardust.