What I'm reading ...

I have started Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews. I have been sitting on this for a while and it was time for some down to earth non-fiction. Here’s the blurb:

Bill Gates is an American icon, the ultimate revenge of the nerd. The youngest self-made billionaire in history was for many years the most powerful person in the computer industry. His tantrums, his odd rocking tic, and his lavish philanthropy have become the stuff of legend. Gates is the one book that truly illuminates the early years of the man and his company.
In high school he organized computer enterprises for profit. At Harvard he co-wrote Microsoft BASIC, the first commercial personal computer software, then dropped out and made it a global standard. At 25, he offered IBM a program he did not yet own--a program called DOS that would become the essential operating system for more than 100 million personal computers and the foundation of the Gates empire. As Microsoft's dominance extended around the globe, Bill Gates became idolized, hated, and feared.
In this riveting independent biography, veteran computer journalists Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews draw on a dozen sessions with Gates himself and nearly a thousand hours of interviews with his friends, family, employees, and competitors to debunk the myths and paint the definitive picture of the real Bill Gates, "bugs" and all. Here is the shy but fearless competitor with the guts and brass to try anything once--on a computer, at a negotiation, or on water skis. Here is the cocky 23-year-old who calmly spurned an enormous buyout offer from Ross Perot. Here is the supersalesman who motivated his Smart Guys, fought bitter battles with giant IBM, and locked horns with Apple's Steve Jobs--and usually won. Here, too, is the workaholic pessimist who presided over Microsoft's meteoric rise while most other personal computer pioneers fell by the wayside. Gates extended his vision of software to art, entertainment, education, and even biotechnology, and made good on much of his promise to put his software "on every desk and in every home."
Gates is a bracing, comprehensive portrait of the microcomputer industry, one of its leading companies, and the man who helped create a world where software is everything.

The Secret Commonwealth - by Philip Pullman

This is a long, complex book, but I am happy to say that I never got lost and I was motivated to keep turning the pages right up to the end. Overall the quality of writing is what I’d expect from this author. My challenge was remembering much of what happened in His Dark Materials and in La Belle Sauvage, but this did not cause me any great difficulty.

I had one disappointment and this will almost be a spoiler. Towards the end of the book, the tension is building and it seems hard to imagine how the particular situation will resolve itself in the last few pages. This is because it doesn’t. The book ends with those awful 3 words: To be continued … And I have no idea when the next book is due to come out.

What I'm reading ...

I have started The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman. I read the first book of the Dust trilogy a while ago and was looking forward to this, the second volume. It is so long since I read the His Dark Materials books that I wonder if I will follow this book, as it takes place in a later time frame [whereas La Belle Sauvage took place before]. I think it likely that the author will have accommodated the “new reader”. Here’s the blurb:

The second volume of Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed.
Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.
Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.

Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There - by Rutger Bregman

I found this book to be a remarkably easy read, as, for a non-fiction book of its type, it has great pace. The language used is very accessible, which I think is a lot to do with the translation [from the original Dutch]. I quickly realized that the author and I were of a like mind on many things. He supports a number of somewhat radical ideas that I, too, espouse. The difference between us is that he has hard evidence to back up his views.

Overall, I think it is an amazing book, which is broadly optimistic, as it shows a way forward for our society that looks very attractive [to me] and it is, at least theoretically, attainable. The book is very up to date - there are references to Trump and Boris - but I think the ideas will last well. It was easily the most understandable and influential political book that I have ever read. I cannot say that it is life changing [for me], as I am unsure that I can do anything individually to move matters forward. However, I will look at who I vote for and what I march for with a new eye.

What I'm reading ...

I have started Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There by Rutger Bregman. It was time for some non-fiction and this was recommended strongly by a trusted friend. Here’s the blurb:

In Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman shows that we can construct a society with visionary ideas that are, in fact, wholly implementable. Every milestone of civilisation – from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy – was once considered a utopian fantasy. New utopian ideas such as universal basic income and a fifteen-hour work week can become reality in our lifetime.
From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he introduces ideas whose time has come.

Transcription - by Kate Atkinson

Although this was different from earlier books by this author, I still really enjoyed reading it. It is complex, with a couple of timelines, but I never found myself lost or confused. There were just enough twists and turns in the story, a good pace and it had a fairly clear ending.

If I have one disappointment, it is that I like to feel that I have learned something from reading a book, even a novel. In this case, I may have learned something about MI5 during and after WW2. However, there were a few very minor factual errors that shake my confidence. For example, it was suggested that people with any German connections in the UK were given a hard time, including those who owned German Shepherd dogs. This sounds reasonable, except that the widespread use of this name for the breed did not come until the 1970s. The author does, to give her credit, say that this is a work of fiction, so the odd fact may be astray. But I do feel this is a little lazy.