Other books I've recently read

Some other books I've read in the last few weeks - one or two have been mentioned elsewhere I expect.

Venetia Thompson Gross Misconduct, a story of her time as a broker in the City of London - the usual tale of excessive drinking, but quite good fun anyway

More seriously, Piper and Murphy's Very Short Introduction to Cryptography , a theme that has some relevance for our trading which is based, in part, on decoding the imprint of large traders influencing price. But it would be fair to say that neither this, nor Simon Singh's The Code Book that I read before it, really had as much relevance as I thought they might have.

Next, Illiad's User Friendly and In a Nutshell, two cartoon books set in the early late 90s and the start of the open-source movement.

Claire Dederer's Poser is quite a new book set around the story of her life and yoga. Actually yoga is about 15% of the book, but I have quite enjoyed it anyway. Her parents were counter-culture 60s hippies and the discussions of the disadvantages to children of having such parents has been very interesting.

Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture continues my interest in the impact of the internet on music. I have long held that the period of dominance by large record companies is coming to an end - something I have believed since the days of punk. It has never been a better time to be a music listener and never a worse time to be a record company. That both are true is a little mysterious.

Plummer's Wishing my Father Well is a fishing / autobiography and is ok, though I find the author a little whiny. But some parts have been good. By constrast, my other current fishing book, John Gierach's Trout Bum, is just great. Gierach is a sort of hippy beatnic fisherman, who basically lives his life around fishing. A role model for us all I reckon.

Mikal Gilmore's Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents is a collection of essays on such 60s personalities as Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey, The Beatles, Allen Ginsberg, etc. And Miles Hippie is pretty much the same - though with pictures