I'm a husband, father, author, cyclist, sailor, travel addict, and Silicon Valley software engineer. I've written 4 books and actively review books on this blog.
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The Adventures of Mary Darling is a mash up of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes. If you don't remember Mary Darling, it's because she's never mentioned after the kids are stolen by Peter Pan. She's Wendy's mother, and in this version of the story, she too had been stolen by Peter Pan and escaped, but somehow neglected to prepare her kids for Peter's visit.
The version of Sherlock Holmes portrayed by the novel is very modern, viewing the text as Watson's prettying up of Holmes's behavior, playing on the modern readers' viewing of his portrayal by Benedict Cumberland. To be honest, Holmes adds very little to this story, which I thought was a pity.
Mary Darling, of course, goes after her kids like you'd imagine a mother would, and displays an impressive background story that also comes into play. What doesn't work is that if you knew that Peter Pan was going to come after your kids wouldn't you have told them about it?
I've read other Pat Murphy's books like The City, Not Long After, and that book had the benefit of not having such obvious plot holes. Once you get over those plot holes, however, the book's transparent, moves quickly, and a fun read. It's also relatively short so it doesn't overstay its welcome.
I'm pretty sure this book will come under attack if it becomes too successful. As I mentioned, working in Sherlock Holmes to make him look bad just seems a little artificial to me. But I liked the way she broke everything else down about Peter Pan. Worth your time.
After reading Robert Caro's series on Lyndon Johnson, I bought (through audible) the audiobook version of The Power Broker, which is his biography of Robert Moses, who essentially built most of the infrastructure and parks of the city of New York. The book took me 18 months to listen to the finish.
The biography centers around Robert Moses control of various transportation agencies and authorities, generating revenue from bridges, toll highways, and maybe even parks. It's astonishing how he managed to get the laws written such that no elected official could stop him, and he could build with impunity. There are lots of places where he abused his power, and one of the reasons he got away with it for so long was that he never abused his power in order to enrich himself, but rather, to get more power. So he could always legitimately claim that he didn't personally benefit from holding all those posts that generated revenue, he could hand out largesse to an army of contractors, concessionaires, engineering firms, and even restaurant owners.
The book is even handed. When you give someone like Robert Moses the power to ignore voters and elected officials, you get stuff done. Parks were built quickly, as were roads and highways. Unfortunately, Moses was not a fan of public transit or affordable housing, or poor people, or non-whites. So the cost of getting all the done was that neighborhoods full of vulnerable people were bulldozed, and those people became more impoverished. What's interesting was that Moses was politically savvy enough to ensure that the various mayors, etc got invited to the ribbon cuttings of various openings so they could share in the credit for the infrastructure improvements, so there was never any incentive for even the elected officials to oust him.
This book explains why housing and infrastructure built in the USA today is so bad. The backlash to the existence of someone like Robert Moses all but ensured that nothing can get done without tons of oversight. The book is a valuable counterpoint to Abundance, but I hope that the country can get to a point where it can build again.
I enjoyed the book but probably should have gotten it in electronic format so I could read it rather than endure 50 hours worth of listening to it.
I recently got a chance to see Ted Chiang in person at SJSU. He was great, and it triggered me to re-read Exhalation. One of the big themes of the book now that I've heard Ted Chiang in person is the debate over whether we have free will. Interestingly enough, I feel like Chiang's stories actually strongly imply that we do not have free will, while at the talk he gave, he claimed that he's strongly on the side of having free will! The explanation for the apparent contradiction, he said, was that "You actually want to have your entire experience (your upbringing, what you've read, learned, etc) to come to bear on your decisions. Free will cannot exist in an environment where you're just randomly picking between choices." In one of the stories, a character states that you're the result of all your previous choices, so by making a decision to be a kind person, you make it easier for yourself to become kinder in the future. I thought that was a great insight.
Another aspect of the stories that jumps out now that I've seen Ted Chiang in person is that the stories all have some uplifting aspect or even optimism built into the endings. He explained it as being the kind of person for whom it's easy to take the negative view of life, and when he works on a story, he spends a ton of time immersed in it, so he consciously chooses stories where there's some redemption, because it's not good for himself to be immersed in negativity.
The book is great. Every story is worth reading, and not a single one is a dud. It's also a short quick read. I highly recommend it.
The Shape of a Life is the autobiography of Shing-Tung Yau, ghost-written by Steven Nadis, since Yau is not a native English speaker and probably speaks Math better than he speaks English. You come to expect a certain trope when immigrants talk about their stories, like the incredible poverty they grew up with, and the struggle to get an education good enough to qualify for a transplantation to the West.
Yau lives up to this expectation. He's perhaps a little too modest about his achievements, since he portrayed his admissions into the UC Berkeley PhD Math program as being luckily selected by a visiting Math professor at his high school who advocated on his behalf. He astonishingly gets his PhD in a record 2 years, having written a publishable formal proof during the break in between semesters during his first year in graduate school!
Yau, of course, is famous for being part of the Calabi-Yau manifold description, and definitely someone who's made major contributions to the advancement of mathematics. The guy definitely worked hard and he and his wife frequently lived on opposite coasts during their marriage before finally getting to live together at Harvard University.
Yau will disabuse you of the notion that academic mathematics has no politics. The amount of politics he had to deal with as an accomplished and famous mathematician is quite astounding, and the factionalism he encountered in particular as being part of the Chinese mathematical community is even more astonishing, since in that culture, you're supposed to support your mentor and they expect you to be grateful. I couldn't help but think that his problems there was self-inflicted. A lot of his collaborators weren't Chinese, and he didn't have to go out of his way to get involved in Chinese politics.
Another cliche in Chinese American literature is the feeling that you don't belong in either the West or in Asia. Yau does his best to live up to this cliche, including declaring in several places in the book that his heart was in China and he would do his best to bring Chinese academics up to the standards of the West, even though many of the problems of the Chinese mathematical communities are self-inflicted:
the academic system in China is more complicated because major universities are under the control of the government through the Ministry of Education. Leadership changes at universities, which happen periodically, can result in significant upheaval. When new people come in, they don’t want to do what their predecessors agreed to because in that case the successors won’t get much credit. They want to have something new to show their superiors, which means doing something different, even if that means curtailing a successful program and replacing it with an ineffectual one. This introduces an element of uncertainty to operations in Chinese universities that does not exist in their U.S. counterparts. Every university in the United States, to be sure, has its own internal politics—the inevitable squabbles within departments, between departments, and between the faculty and administration. But when the country as a whole elects a new president, that doesn’t usually affect anything at the campus level—unless, of course, major funding cuts or policy shifts are instituted as a result of a change at the top. (page 263)
(Yes, I am very well aware of the irony that the USA is trying to emulate this aspect of the Chinese academic community!)
I will say that as an Asian immigrant who's extremely grateful that the USA invested in him at a time when no private banker would have, I'm astounded at the lack of gratefulness Yau displays in this autobiography. At one point Yau was stateless (no passport since the British consulate took back his right to a British passport after he got a green card), yet the USA continually worked with him to grant him opportunities to travel and return. And obviously in 2024 Yau gave up his job at Harvard to move back to China to join Tsinghua university, which clearly tells you where his loyalties lie. Being politically oblivious, he probably doesn't see this as potentially making things much worse for the Chinese American communities who may not wish to move, but I'm flabbergasted that someone whose material well-being and ability to achieve his potential was only enabled by Western largesse being so entitled about it!
I enjoyed the book, and probably learned a lot less math than I thought I would have (it's written at a layman's level), but I certainly learned a lot more about the old school Chinese immigrant and their attitudes than I expected.
All the reviews of The King's Peace mentioned that it was an Arthurian retelling. It's also Jo Walton's first novel, and it shows. The writing, while workmanlike and readable, isn't as compelling as others, and the use of place names in an imaginary Britain populated with Celtic names doesn't work to give you a sense of place.
The narrator, Sulien, is a large woman trained as a warrior, and at the start of the novel is raped by raiders who also kill her brother. Making a pact to escape, she discovers the rest of her village was also pillaged, and is assigned to ride for help. Finding King Urdo, the Arthur of the story, she joins his military as an armiger, and devotes herself to his forging a kingdom and fighting his battles until he unites the island as a high king and enforces the peace.
This may be an Arthurian-style story, but it's one with a light touch. You'd have a hard time figuring who's the Merlin analogue, though the Guinevere analog wasn't hard. I kept trying to figure out whether Sulien was Lancelot, and it might be she is, but there's no love triangle, though her powress at arms are quite apparent.
There's magic in the book, as well as the well-understood struggle between the new Christian-analog religion and the old Celtic-analog gods. But gods are real, and magic is real, though not the showy type. I enjoyed that aspect but again, it doesn't play a big part in the story.
Ultimately, the biggest weakness of the book is that it drags quite a bit. It certainly doesn't make me want to go out and read further books in the series.
The Thinking Machine is a biography of Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, and a chronicle of the company he led through founding to becoming the megacap stock it is today.
As a biography, it's perhaps not as complete as those of Steve Jobs as you might wish, but on the other hand, it taught me several things that I didn't know about Nvida, not that I knew a lot about them in the first place. For instance, Nvidia didn't have a mission statement, because Huang didn't believe in them. (Kindle loc 1010). This is completely anamolous, and contrary to the hordes of business books touting the value of missions.
Secondly, Jensen has a reputation for yelling at people when they screw up. That's normal, but on the other hand, he values that experience that you were taught and doesn't fire people for screwing up:
“Very rarely does Jensen make significant changes as a result of execution issues,” Halepete said. “He’s very conscious of having an even slightly chilling effect on people’s willingness to take risks and innovate. As a result, his level of forgiveness for even the largest screw-ups is extremely high.” Halepete surmised that the tirades were what Jensen did instead of showing you the door. “He will berate you, he will yell at you, he will insult you—whatever,” Halepete said. “He’s never going to fire you.” (kindle loc 1745)
That sort of thing generates loyalty and breeds a willingness to take risk, so it's not a surprise that Nvidia employees venerate him. The other thing that's special about Nvidia is the span of control Huang has. I've said in Startup Engineering Management that there's no reason the span of control of a good manager should be as small as 6 people, other than that Silicon Valley has an unusually bad management training program (as in, "What management training program?") and so most engineering managers are so bad that they would flail at having to manage more than 6 people. In Nvidia's case, he has 30 direct reports:
As Nvidia grew, Huang maintained an agile corporate structure, with no fixed divisions or hierarchy. The C-Suite was essentially just him, with no COO, no CTO, no CMO, and no obvious second-in-command. Huang didn’t even have a chief of staff. Instead, he had more than thirty people reporting to him directly, most of them given fluid responsibilities under the all-encompassing title of “vice president.” (kindle loc 2261)
Management professors theorized that a chief executive should ideally have between eight and twelve direct reports. Huang now had fifty-five. (kindle loc 3376)
Think about how hard someone like that has to work. He'd have to process information from all 55 direct reports, and then make decisions and possibly direct the work of all of them. It's impressive then that he had time to pivot the company from graphics and CUDA into AI, and the company was able to consistently undervalue the crypto market and consciously downplay it!
Of course, the example that sets on Huang's kids is significant:
Horstmann also observed that neither Huang’s nor his own kids had initially gone into technical fields. “I think they tried to get out of this crazy work environment,” he said. “I think they looked at us, and said, ‘There’s got to be more to life than this.’ ” (kindle loc 1924)
Later in the book, the author reveals that Huang eventually got his kids to work in Nvidia, though not necessarily in technical fields. There's a claim that no nepotism is involve but I wonder how much the author investigated.
All in all, the book was worth reading, though again Nvidia seems to be an extreme outlier amongst even Silicon Valley companies, so I'm not sure you can generalize that you should emulate Huang in not having a mission statement. The real test for Nvida is if Huang steps down and to see if the company collapses without having such a singular person at the helm.
We tried to visit Pigeon Point earlier this year, but a bout of rain with 20+mph winds came in and we moved the date back. The forecast for our new date was that it was going to rain as well, but with much milder weather and brisk but not howling winds we decided to go for it. Indeed, it rained overnight on Saturday, but by breakfast time it was sunny and mild!
Mark Brody had showed up the night before so he could borrow my Revelate saddlebag. He'd not managed to get a spot at Pigeon Point but had found room at Costanoa just 4 miles away. A last minute cancellation freed up room for Arturo, so he could join as well. I unpacked the REI Link Saddlebags for Bowen and Xiaoqin, and we loaded it all on their bikes. I broke out the Ortleib panniers, and Stephan and Otto had gotten a rack installed on their bike as well, and were also using Ortleib panniers which were a wedding gift that they'd been using all these years. Eva would join us for the ride up Page Mill Road.
The climb up Page Mill Road was straightforward though a little on the steep side. We'd given Bowen a 30 minute headstart but saw him right after the Los Trancos entrance at which point he gave himself a boost. I would find out later that he'd pre-bribed his brother to deliberately slow down so he could beat us to the summit. At the summit we saw views of the ocean, took a few photos, and proceeded to barrel down West Alpine road. Stephan and Otto, loaded down with an extra laptop were taking it easy so we decided not to wait for them.
The descent on West Alpine road in Spring is as pretty as anything you'll do anywhere in the world. The corners are broad and the hillsides are lush and green and filled with lupines, poppies, and other flowers. If you're not riding this on a bicycle you'll miss most of it.
At the junction with Pescadero road we made a left turn and proceeded to climb up Haskins Hill, which was very pleasant in the cool air. At the summit there was a team in training support vehicle that offered us a refill, but it was so cool I thought I'd make it till lunch at least on my single water bottle, which had been refilled at the water fountain before the Montebello parking lot.
The descent to Pescadero was a delight, and screamingly fast on the tandem. There were gentle rollers but none of them demanding high effort. Mark Brody caught up to us once we were past much of the descent and we rode along. The Revelate bag was going very well, and he was in high spirits, given that he hadn't done a lot of riding so far this year.
At the Pescadero city limit sign we waited for everyone and then went to the goat farm to see the baby goats and buy some goat cheese. The kids were pretty hungry, so we headed over to Arcangeli's grocery for their famous garlic artichoke bread, buying 3 of those to go with the cheese and prosciutto we'd brought from home. Surprisingly, we polished off all the garlic artichoke bread and went in to buy dinner and breakfast. We ended up with. Sphagetti and sausages, as well as an entire peach pie, and then a loaf of banana bread for breakfast. Stephan and Otto showed up just as we were about to pay for the groceries, but we wanted to go reserve space at the hot tub so we left after letting them know that we'd put in a reservation for them.
Bean Hollow road was surprisingly pretty with more flowers to entertain us on the mild and gentle climb. Soon enough we were descending to the intersection with Highway 1, and then proceeding down the coast with views of the Pacific Ocean on the right. Arriving at Pigeon Point, we went through the checkin process, unpacked, locked up the bikes, made our beds, and then went for a walk.
Pigeon Point Lighthouse is a minor state park, and this year's flowers were nothing short of amazing. We walked around in awe, framing pictures of the flowers with a combination of the Pacific, the lighthouse, and ourselves. I'd never seen it this flowerful before, since Pigeon Point was usually for us an earlier visit.
We made dinner and ate it before our hot tub spot. As we walked towards the hot tub we felt a few sprinkles here and there, but it never turned into rain, not even getting our clothes more than slightly damp. Of course, in the hot tub we didn't even notice. Boen saw a seal bathing on the rock, but it was too overcast for us to care about missing the sunset time --- there wasn't going to be a sunset that evening.
After everyone was done with the hot tub we ate pie. Bowen amazed everyone by reciting 30 digits of Pi in order to win a second piece of pie. Kids amaze you when they do things like this and you never even noticed them practicing or saying that they wanted to do this.
We had an early bed time as the weather forecast had shifted. Rather than the weather improving as the day went, the forecast was that it was more likely to rain later in the day.
Waking up around 6:30am, I made coffee and sliced the Banana cake. Arturo had found ants in the pastry he had bought the day before, but he cleaned it off and ate it anyway. We got everyone cleaned up and ready to go by around 8:30am, and took off against the headwind, pacelining up Highway 1. Once we turned off onto Bean Hollow Road the headwind became much less of a problem.
Arturo discovered he'd left his sunglasses behind so he'd had to turn around to fetch it. But he would catch up on Stage Road. Mark Brody hadn't gotten up early, and so he was far behind. At the Stage Road/84 intersection the San Gregorio store was closed, so we couldn't get refreshments. The kids all voted to go up 84 instead of Tunitas Creek. To my surprise Arturo voted with the kids. "Kings Mountain Road is treacherous in the rain if it's wet!" he declaimed. The traffic on 84 didn't seem too bad, so I was OK with the decision.
Riding up 84 with a tailwind was easy in the light morning traffic. We regrouped at Applejack's in La Honda, where we took a snack break. Arturo warned us about poison oak going up. From there, it was a 3 mile uphill run with much more annoying traffic, including a group of sports cars hell bent on showing cyclists how much more power you get when you're willing to burn fossil fuels. At the Old La Honda road intersection we waited for everyone and put on a jacket, because the sky had turned much more cloudy.
We started climbing after Xiaoqin took off. Boen knew that this was the last big climb so he pulled out all stops, and we slowly reeled her in. As we approached the redwoods near the summit Boen put in another big effort and we put a gap into her. We would later discover that she had had a slow flat on her front. Riding through the redwoods in the fog was gorgeous, and we made it to the intersection with Skyline blvd. After Xiaoqin arrived, we replaced her inner tube, not having found whatever foreign matter had punctured her tube.
We finished the repair just when everyone else rolled up. We split into 2 groups: Stephan and I opting for the longer route going down 84, while everyone else rolled down Old La Honda road. The tandems can go really fast on 84, and with light traffic we were not concerned about impatient drivers. Skyline Blvd was wet, but 84 itself was nice and dry. By the time we got back to Old La Honda road the others were already waiting for us.
From there it was a short ride to downtown Los Altos, but Arturo had neglected to eat so we had to feed him before resuming the ride. Silicon Valley was completely dry, looking like it hadn't rained at all during the time. The ride was uneventful and we had a big lunch after which we went home via our separate ways. It was a great trip!
