I just realized that I internalized the O’Reilly house style decades ago, and so I think it’s the proper way to write documentation.

Primary elements: the document, even at book length, takes the form of a precise, pedantic, but informal letter to the audience. The author might reference themself as “I” and tell brief anecdotes to contextualize the material, and frequently encourages the reader in the second person:

You can also reticulate the frobnitz with the ‘–frob-harder’ switch if that feels more natural to you.

As a side effect, this style of technical writing minimizes the number of gendered pronouns, which I always prefer because I don’t know who is reading the work.

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• Linda Nagata - Red: The Trials
• Michael Swanwick - Chasing the Phoenix
• Terry Pratchett - The Shepherd’s Crown
• Seanan McGuire - A Red Rose Chain
• Zen Cho - Sorceror to the Crown
• Fran Wilde - Updraft

• Patrick Lee, Signal
• Ernest Cline, Armada
• Max Gladstone, First Last Snow
• Dan Wells, The Devil’s Only Friend

Quality is strange. By quality we mean a difference that we can sense but not count, something continuous and analog rather than discrete and digital. It does not directly map into happiness. Quality carries connotations of both the singular taste and the popular fashion. It places different items together in categories that may not easily be described.

Today’s books share the quality of being, in my opinion, books that don’t stink. This is not a very high bar…

Stephenson’s editor didn’t. The result is the worst book with Stephenson’s name on it.

Recently read:

• The Great Way (The Way Into Chaos, The Way Into Magic, The Way Into Darkness), by Harry Connolly

• The Genome, by Sergei Lukyanenko

Brief reviews follow.

Every so often I keep track of what I’m reading; sometimes this lasts as long as a year before I get out of the habit.

I generally don’t comment on business and tech titles, because they tend to have a narrow audience. What I read for pleasure: SF, fantasy, horror, biography, and to some degree politics. I try to avoid major spoilers, but I’m not always successful.