Tonya's Book Blog: June 2023 Summer Reading

Hi friends

We finally had somewhat of a break from being sick in June. At least, all the kids were mostly well, so that was nice. I managed to get some reading including some great nonfiction reads about federal IT policy and exploring the universe and some great novels including R.F Kuang’s and Emily Henry’s latest.

As usual, let me know what you think of these books and if you have suggestions for further reading.

Thanks!

Tonya

Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe by Phillip Plait

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This was a fun way to learn more about our solar system and the universe. Plait intersperses interesting descriptions of different bodies inside and outside of our solar system with brief fictional accounts imagining the reader as an explorer setting foot on different extraterrestrial bodies. His descriptions of what it would be like to stand on an asteroid or sail through the rings of Saturn were particularly stunning, and I really felt like this was maybe the closest I could get to actually experiencing those events. Plait has meticulously researched the physics and science about each body the reader visits, so the description is supposed to be as real to life as possible. Highly recommend for those interested in learning more about the universe.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes!

Review: This was the first book I’ve read by Kuang, and it set my expectations pretty high. The confounding thing about reading this book was that I strongly disliked the protagonist, who makes some really unethical and immoral decisions, but I couldn’t stop reading. The story is told in first-person as well, so you are intimately connected with her as she rationalizes all sorts of bad choices. I don’t know how Kuang struck that balance between writing an unlikeable character and keeping the reader engaged, but she did it amazingly well. This book combined several different genres and had a lot to say about the publishing industry and racism. The narrator is a straight, white woman, but the main relationship the book explores is between her and Athena, the narrator's Asian, recently-deceased, sometimes friend but other times rival. Despite the fact that Athena is dead most of the book, she’s the main force behind most of the plot and character development. It was kind of like reading a train wreck that I couldn’t look away from. I really enjoyed it and would definitely recommend.

Legendborn (Legendborn #1) by Tracy Deonn

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes, for YA fantasy fans

Review: I pick up a Young Adult fantasy novel about once a year. I consider them somewhat of an indulgence, and I’ve found that my enjoyment of them has decreased as I read more adult fantasy. This one had an interesting premise that I thought might set it apart: it’s set in the modern-day American South and follows 16 year-old Brianna Matthews, a young, black girl. This story played strongly on a lot of well-known fantasy and young adult tropes, and some were executed better than others. There’s a secret society, the discovery of unknown magical powers, and a love triangle. I wasn’t a fan of the love triangle, and the secret society definitely has a “need to burn this down” vibe. This was the first YA fantasy book I’ve read that talks a lot about race. In fact, race is central to the story, and Deonn doesn’t back down from the complexities involved. For me, that aspect made this story stand out. I’d recommend for those looking for something a little bit different from your standard YA fantasy.

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Rating: 2 of 5 stars

Recommendation: maybe

Review: I’ve read all of Henry’s other adult romance novels, and I feel like this is the weakest one of the lot. Henry’s strength is writing really good relationships. This book focuses on a group of friends that’s experiencing several major transitions together. They’ve been friends since college, but as they all move on from their college selves, they’re having trouble fitting into each other’s new lives. This is especially true for our male and female leads who broke off their 8-year long romantic relationship 4 months before the novel starts but haven’t told any of their friends. Through a series of misunderstandings, they end up together on their annual friends trip and decide they have to keep up the façade that they haven’t broken up. As you can expect, hijinks ensue, and the story plays out mostly as expected. The story is written with flashbacks to the beginnings of the lead couple’s relationship interspersed with scenes from the present-day trip. The climax of the book actually happens in the past when we finally discover the reason for their break-up. While I liked how this story-telling approach built suspense and varied from the typical meet-cute and then fall-in-love formula, I just didn’t buy the reason for the break-up. It seemed like a couple that had been together 8 years should have had better communication skills, but whatever. The friend group was fun, but it didn’t feel as satisfying as Henry’s other stories. It was largely OK.

The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, Science, Technolgoy, and Politics by Rpbert W. Smith

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: for those who like space policy

Review: This book was a long case study that explored the development of the Hubble space telescope. It’s somewhat telling to note that the book finished before the telescope actually launches because of the grounding of the shuttle fleet after the Columbia accident. So, there’s no discussion of the on-orbit issues that plagued the program and subsequent servicing missions. That being said, you can see that the program had issues getting off the ground, pun intended. The Hubble development program was characterized by overly-optimistic cost and schedule estimates and a vast underestimation of the complexity in developing the technologies needed. In addition, programmatic issues from splitting the work up across multiple NASA centers and contractors, so that everyone would get a piece of the work, led to more delays and communications issues. This was enlightening to read, but didn’t surprise me. Turns out that even though it’s been 3 decades, NASA hasn’t changed, and they still have the same issues developing current major programs and projects. It’s kind of disheartening to realize that no one has learned any lessons from repeated acquisition failures over the decades. I don’t have a solution, but it seems to be a problem of incentives. In the end, Hubble has been the most productive scientific instrument ever created, but I just wish that we could get there without all the angst along the way.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy #1) by Mark Lawrence

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes,

Review: I expected that this book would be a stand-alone novel, but it’s in fact the start of a trilogy. I think it’s good to have that expectation going in, or the last 15% of the book is going to be really frustrating. I love the world that Lawrence has created. In this world, humanity is trapped in an endless cycle of conflict with the “sabbers,” a dog-like intelligent species they share this planet with. The humans currently occupy the city that houses the great library that contains all the knowledge of centuries. A big part of the book is exploring the library and the soft magic system that it contains. Lawrence explores issues of class, violence, access to education, and perception against the backdrop of this magical library. The setting is superb, the characters are great, and the relationships that they develop with each other are engaging. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy, and I can’t wait for the next one to come out.

Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better by Jennifer Pahlka

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This book came highly-recommended as the single most important policy book to read from Ezra Klein. I definitely agree. Pahlka has had a lengthy career in the technology industry with experience in both private and public sectors. She makes the case that government needs to develop an internal capacity for information systems instead of just contracting out to the lowest bidder. She explores several IT catastrophes from the rollout of heatlhcare.gov to California’s unemployment system during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have never read a book that spoke so closely to my lived experience as a government employee. Phalka talks about how government IT systems are patched together, fragile, and jumbled assemblies of different systems, coding languages, and interfaces. In the case of California’s unemployment system, there is no single person that completely understands all of the systems involved. Pahlka argues that the root of the problem stems from the government’s use of waterfall development processes as compared to agile. If you’re not familiar with the Silicon Valley speak, waterfall development means that the requirements are set at the beginning and then bid out to the lowest offeror, who makes a one-time delivery of a large product that hopefully meets those requirements. Agile development focuses on quickly delivering iteratives capability to customers and adjusting requirements as technology changes. Moving from waterfall to agile isn’t easy when there are a multitude of stakeholders, a lack of knowledgeable professionals, and an incredibly complex and high-burden acquisition process. My own role of providing accountability to Congress plays a role in the problem, being one of many pressures that result in extremely risk-averse government professionals who aren’t rewarded for delivering working products that execute missions or benefit the people they’re supposed to serve. Instead, civil servants are predominantly rewarded for following processes correctly, which is exactly what we evaluate them on. This attention to process over outcomes, ensures that bureaucrats can largely keep their jobs when things go wrong, but it doesn’t help effectively implement policy. Effectively implementing policy is a challenge outside of the IT sphere, but Pahlka argues that ensuring that policy makers consider and focus not only on implementation but the role that technology will play in implementation can strengthen people’s faith in government and democracy. I couldn’t agree more.

Mommy Corner

I can't figure out how to rotate the image, but these are the trophies that Chloe made for her and Maya after Uncle Troy beat them at a boardgame when he was visiting. They have a lot to learn about being good losers.