Book Review: Me vs Brain - An Overthinker’s Guide to Life by Hayley Morris

I bought this book for the title alone and I'm glad I did! I don't think I've seen any of Hayley Morris's comedy sketches. To be honest, you don't need to be a fan of her work to appreciate the humour and courage in this book. It could quite easily have been a cash-in celebrity autobiography - light on the details and full of charming anecdotes - and I'm sure her fans would have snapped it up.

Instead it is a darkly funny meditation on intrusive thoughts, panic, and acceptance.

Her prose is exceptionally good - I loved the way she described doing the washing up as "giving a dinner plate a little bubble bath" - it's also extremely relatable. Everyone occasionally thinks "what if I just ran away?" or "what would happen if I dropped this glass?" For most people it is just a passing moment; but for Hayley it is something more intense.

All of this is smuggled to the reader hidden within poop jokes, tales of teenage awkwardness, and millennial angst. It is consistently funny which makes the sudden switch to pathos all the more effective. It morphs into a tender tale of loss, loneliness, and something else beginning with L which will make me sound erudite.

I wouldn't describe it quite as a "self-help" book, but I think that's clearly part of the intention. Lots of people need to know that their (parasocial) friends find therapy useful. Having someone influential describe the journey to better mental health in such a relatable way will undoubtedly help others.

Book Review: Diversifying Open Source - An Open Standards Playbook for Inclusive and Equitable Tech Projects by Paloma Oliveira

It is refreshing to read a political polemic which contains useful actions the reader can take. Too many books about the social problems with technology end up being a diagnosis with no cure.

Paloma Oliveira's new book (with technical review by my friend Dawn Foster) is a deep dive into how we can all make Open Source more inclusive and equitable.

Unlike most tech books, it doesn't follow the usual pattern of restricting itself to the US hegemony. It is very focussed on the EU and the needs of people around the world. It is clear in identifying many of the problems which arise when people say they just want to focus on tech, not politics:

When projects focus purely on technical excellence without considering accessibility, they create implicit barriers. Documentation written only in English, community discussions held during North American business hours, or development environments that require high-end hardware all reflect choices that determine who can participate—though these choices often remain unexamined.

This is profoundly important. The book isn't afraid to be challenging. It links the way companies extract value from the commons to the way colonisers extracted value from the lands they "discovered".

There are a few missteps which I didn't care for. While it starts as very casually written, it quickly finds itself getting into the weeds of political philosophy. I think that's a necessary evil. But I don't know how easily people will be convinced by passages like:

Bratton notes secessionist withdrawal in traditional territories and consolidation domains in stacked hemispheric, the continuing expansions of nebular sovereignties, and the reform of conventional States into regional platforms.

Similarly, there are a few "just-so" stories which are fictional parables. I think they would have been more convincing as actual case-studies.

I did find myself skipping some of the background in order to get to the parts I found more interesting. The chapter on "Political Rhetoric and Institution Validation" felt a bit out of place and I didn't get much from it.

But, after all that theory, there is a lot of practical advice. From how to structure your README to how to communicate change to your community. Even better, all the templates and resources are on GitHub.

It is thoroughly referenced and gave me lots of new rabbit-holes to follow Rather pleasingly, it cites my 2020 blog post "Please Stop Inventing New Software Licences" as an example of the ways in which corporates often try to stifle open source.

If you want to help Open Source succeed, you owe it to yourself to grab a copy of this book.

Book Review: The Examiner - Janice Hallett

I've thoroughly enjoyed all of Janice Hallett's previous crime books. The Examiner is, frankly, more of the same - and I'm happy with that!

You, the reader, are given a series of transcripts and have to work out what crime (if any) has been committed. You don't find out who the victim(s) is/are until reasonably far through the story. The characters are well realised (although a little similar to some of her others). The twists are shockingly good and will make you flick back to see if you could have spotted them.

Hallett is exquisite at building tension through the slow drip-drip-drip of reveals. OK, so the transcripts are a bit unrealistic but they make a good scaffold. While it might be nice to include user avatars on the WhatsApp messages, the characters' voices are unique enough to distinguish them easily.

Much like The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, the book plays around with symbolism and the nature of faith. You may find yourself sympathising with the characters and then quickly recanting!

Technical Issues

Viper, the publisher, seem to have messed up the structure of this eBook. Despite being published in 2024, they're using an ancient and obsolete version of the Blitz ePub CSS which itself was archived back in 2020. As well as strange indents, there's a hard-coded 2em margin only on the right.

Accessibility is poor. All the abbreviations use the <abbr> element. But some kind of automated find-and-replace has mangled most of them. For example, the "Masters degree in Multimedia Art (Full-Time Programme)" is shortened to "MMAM(FTP)" and then given the nonsensical abbreviation of "Molecular Area Per Molecule (File Transfer Protocol)"!

Much like before I've written to them asking them to correct it.