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books_are_nice_and_enjoyable's reviews
254 reviews
The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett
2.75
Definitely not one of his best books, but it's still Pratchett. Some nuggets of wisdom hidden away there. I shared a few comments about the book on Discord, might as well share a slightly updated version of that text here as well:
"...'Ah, well, life goes on,' people say when someone dies. But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't. It's the universe that goes on."
Terry Pratchett's book The Last Hero, from which the quote is taken, is a funny and silly book. The quote above might not give that impression.
In the quote below I add some more context:
"The reason for the story was a mix of many things. There was humanity's desire to do forbidden deeds merely because they were forbidden. There was its desire to find new horizons and kill the people who live beyond them. There were the mysterious scrolls. There was the cucumber. But mostly there was the knowledge that one day, quite soon, it would be all over. 'Ah, well, life goes on,' people say when someone dies. But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't. It's the universe that goes on. Just as the deceased was getting the hang of everything it's all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one case, a cucumber."
I read the book just a couple of days after learning of the recent death of an acquaintance, after he lost his battle with chronic cancer. For this reason, that quote hit perhaps a bit harder than it otherwise would have. Pratchett did this kind of thing really well; he hid that little bit of 'serious stuff' in there, among the jokes and the magic and what have you. Some of his books are somewhat 'deeper' than they look.
"...'Ah, well, life goes on,' people say when someone dies. But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't. It's the universe that goes on."
Terry Pratchett's book The Last Hero, from which the quote is taken, is a funny and silly book. The quote above might not give that impression.
In the quote below I add some more context:
"The reason for the story was a mix of many things. There was humanity's desire to do forbidden deeds merely because they were forbidden. There was its desire to find new horizons and kill the people who live beyond them. There were the mysterious scrolls. There was the cucumber. But mostly there was the knowledge that one day, quite soon, it would be all over. 'Ah, well, life goes on,' people say when someone dies. But from the point of view of the person who has just died, it doesn't. It's the universe that goes on. Just as the deceased was getting the hang of everything it's all whisked away, by illness or accident or, in one case, a cucumber."
I read the book just a couple of days after learning of the recent death of an acquaintance, after he lost his battle with chronic cancer. For this reason, that quote hit perhaps a bit harder than it otherwise would have. Pratchett did this kind of thing really well; he hid that little bit of 'serious stuff' in there, among the jokes and the magic and what have you. Some of his books are somewhat 'deeper' than they look.
The Linux Command Line by William E. Shotts Jr.
This one was really hard to rate, so I decided not to. It included quite a few things which are actually useful for me to know, in the context of my work. I have used things I learned from this book in my work. It also included some stuff I already knew. But/and it unfortunately also includes some really ugly solution proposals, of the kind which I would happily burn to the ground if I ever found them in code segments I were meant to maintain.
One of the problems at work here is that this is a book about how to use specific tools to solve specific problems. But what if it's madness to try to solve some of those problems with those tools? Sure, you could solve the problem like that, but should you do that? Sometimes the answer is no, you shouldn't, and that dimension does not get much/enough coverage here. Some of the later segments in particular reminded me of conceptually similar passages from de Graaf & Molinaro's book The SQL Cookbook. In that book, the authors also happily cover various ways to solve specific problems which any semi-competent software developer would never in a million years consider using SQL to solve, because using SQL to solve that problem would just be stupid and crazy and lead to a solution structure which would be impossible to maintain. This kind of thing subtracts from the overall experience, which was however mostly positive.
One of the problems at work here is that this is a book about how to use specific tools to solve specific problems. But what if it's madness to try to solve some of those problems with those tools? Sure, you could solve the problem like that, but should you do that? Sometimes the answer is no, you shouldn't, and that dimension does not get much/enough coverage here. Some of the later segments in particular reminded me of conceptually similar passages from de Graaf & Molinaro's book The SQL Cookbook. In that book, the authors also happily cover various ways to solve specific problems which any semi-competent software developer would never in a million years consider using SQL to solve, because using SQL to solve that problem would just be stupid and crazy and lead to a solution structure which would be impossible to maintain. This kind of thing subtracts from the overall experience, which was however mostly positive.