Russ Allbery: 2023 Book Reading in Review
In 2023, I finished and reviewed 53 books, continuing a trend of
year-over-year increases and of reading the most books since 2012 (the
last year I averaged five books a month). Reviewing continued to be
uneven, with a significant slump in the summer and smaller slumps in
February and November, and a big clump of reviews finished in October in
addition to my normal year-end reading and reviewing vacation.
The unevenness this year was mostly due to finishing books and not writing
reviews immediately. Reviews are much harder to write when the finished
books are piling up, so one goal for 2024 is to not let that happen again.
I enter the new year with one book finished and not yet reviewed, after
reading a book about every day and a half during my December vacation.
I read two all-time favorite books this year. The first was Emily Tesh's
debut novel Some
Desperate Glory, which is one of the best space opera novels I have ever
read. I cannot improve on Shelley Parker-Chan's blurb for this book:
"Fierce and heartbreakingly humane, this book is for everyone who loved
Ender's Game, but Ender's Game didn't love them back." This
is not hard science fiction but it is fantastic character fiction. It was
exactly what I needed in the middle of a year in which I was fighting a
"burn everything down" mood.
The second was Night
Watch by Terry Pratchett, the 29th Discworld and 6th Watch novel.
Throughout my Discworld read-through, Pratchett felt like he was on the
cusp of a truly stand-out novel, one where all the pieces fit and the book
becomes something more than the sum of its parts. This was that book.
It's a book about ethics and revolutions and governance, but also about
how your perception of yourself changes as you get older. It does all of
the normal Pratchett things, just... better. While I would love to point
new Discworld readers at it, I think you do have to read at least the
Watch novels that came before it for it to carry its proper emotional
heft.
This was overall a solid year for fiction reading. I read another 15
novels I rated 8 out of 10, and 12 that I rated 7 out of 10. The largest
contributor to that was my Discworld read-through, which was reliably
entertaining throughout the year. The run of Discworld books between
The Fifth Elephant
(read late last year) and Wintersmith (my last of this year) was the best run of Discworld
novels so far. One additional book I'll call out as particularly worth
reading is Thud!,
the Watch novel after Night Watch and another excellent entry.
I read two stand-out non-fiction books this year. The first was Oliver
Darkshire's delightful memoir about life as a rare book seller,
Once Upon a Tome.
One of the things I will miss about Twitter is the regularity with which I
stumbled across fascinating people and then got to read their books. I'm
off Twitter permanently now because the platform is designed to make me
incoherently angry and I need less of that in my life, but it was very
good at finding delightfully quirky books like this one.
My other favorite non-fiction book of the year was Michael Lewis's
Going Infinite, a
profile of Sam Bankman-Fried. I'm still bemused at the negative reviews
that this got from people who were upset that Lewis didn't turn the story
into a black-and-white morality play. Bankman-Fried's actions were
clearly criminal; that's not in dispute. Human motivations can be complex
in ways that are irrelevant to the law, and I thought this attempt to
understand that complexity by a top-notch storyteller was worthy of
attention.
Also worth a mention is Tony Judt's
Postwar, the first
book I reviewed in 2023. A sprawling history of post-World-War-II Europe
will never have the sheer readability of shorter, punchier books, but this
was the most informative book that I read in 2023.
2024 should see the conclusion of my Discworld read-through, after which I
may return to re-reading Mercedes Lackey or David Eddings, both of which I
paused to make time for Terry Pratchett. I also have another re-read
similar to my Chronicles of
Narnia reviews that I've been thinking about for a while. Perhaps I will
start that next year; perhaps it will wait for 2025.
Apart from that, my intention as always is to read steadily, write reviews
as close to when I finished the book as possible, and make reading time
for my huge existing backlog despite the constant allure of new releases.
Here's to a new year full of more new-to-me books and occasional old
favorites.
The full analysis includes some
additional personal reading statistics, probably only of interest to me.
Today, the animation figure Mickey Mouse finally was released from
the corporate copyright prison, as the 1928 movie
Figure 1: Content-Security-Policy browser communication
This is revolutionary, because it allows servers to receive feedback
in real time on errors that may be appearing in the browser s console.
Happy new year. 2023 saw my first foreign travels since COVID lockdown
happened, and that was fun. I felt I had more than enough travel for me.
Work life was challenging due to the lay offs and economic environment
we are operating in, needs a different mode of operation.
Family life is facing a different phase as kids grow, the eldest is
approaching the teens.
This post should have marked the beginning of my yearly roundups of the favourite books and movies I read and watched in 2023.
However, due to coming down with a nasty bout of flu recently and other sundry commitments, I wasn't able to undertake writing the necessary four or five blog posts In lieu of this, however, I will simply present my (unordered and unadorned) highlights for now. Do get in touch if this (or any of my previous posts) have spurred you into picking something up yourself
As in 2022 I took another look back at what changed in Phosh in 2023 and instead of just updating my notes why not share it here. In short: While collecting these bits I became really impressed about the progress we made :
Some numbers Link to heading We were discussing at this years Phosh Community Get Together at Froscon if we should lengthen the Phosh release cycle a bit but we kept the one release per month schedule to get improvements out to users quickly.
By the influencers on the famous proprietary video platform
Anyway, my brain suddenly decided that I needed a red wool dress, fitted
enough to give some bust support. I had already made a 
I knew that I didn t have enough fabric to add a flounce to the hem, as
in the cotton dress, but then I remembered that some time ago I fell for
a piece of fringed trim in black, white and red. I did a quick check
that the red wasn t clashing (it wasn t) and I knew I had a plan for the
hem decoration.
Then I spent a week finishing other projects, and the more I thought
about this dress, the more I was tempted to have spiral lacing at the
front rather than buttons, as a nod to the kirtle inspiration.
It may end up be a bit of a hassle, but if it is too much I can always
add a hidden zipper on a side seam, and only have to undo a bit of the
lacing around the neckhole to wear the dress.
Finally, I could start working on the dress: I cut all of the main
pieces, and since the seam lines were quite curved I marked them with
tailor s tacks, which I don t exactly enjoy doing or removing, but are
the only method that was guaranteed to survive while manipulating this
fabric (and not leave traces afterwards).
While cutting the front pieces I accidentally cut the high neck line
instead of the one I had used on the cotton dress: I decided to go for
it also on the back pieces and decide later whether I wanted to lower
it.
Since this is a modern dress, with no historical accuracy at all, and I
have access to a serger, I decided to use some dark blue cotton voile
I ve had in my stash for quite some time, cut into bias strip, to bind
the raw edges before sewing. This works significantly better than bought
bias tape, which is a bit too stiff for this.
For the front opening, I ve decided to reinforce the areas where the
lacing holes will be with cotton: I ve used some other navy blue cotton,
also from the stash, and added two lines of cording to stiffen the front
edge.
So I ve cut the front in two pieces rather than on the fold, sewn the
reinforcements to the sewing allowances in such a way that the corded
edge was aligned with the center front and then sewn the bottom of the
front seam from just before the end of the reinforcements to the hem.
The allowances are then folded back, and then they are kept in place
by the worked lacing holes. The cotton was pinked, while for the wool I
used the selvedge of the fabric and there was no need for any finishing.
Behind the opening I ve added a modesty placket: I ve cut a strip of red
wool, a strip of cotton, folded the edge of the strip of cotton to the
center, added cording to the long sides, pressed the allowances of the
wool towards the wrong side, and then handstitched the cotton to the
wool, wrong sides facing. This was finally handstitched to one side of
the sewing allowance of the center front.
I ve also decided to add real pockets, rather than just slits, and for
some reason I decided to add them by hand after I had sewn the dress, so
I ve left opening in the side back seams, where the slits were in the
cotton dress. I ve also already worn the dress, but haven t added the
pockets yet, as I m still debating about their shape. This will be fixed
in the near future.
Another thing that will have to be fixed is the trim situation: I like
the fringe at the bottom, and I had enough to also make a belt, but this
makes the top of the dress a bit empty. I can t use the same fringe
tape, as it is too wide, but it would be nice to have something smaller
that matches the patterned part. And I think I can make something
suitable with tablet weaving, but I m not sure on which materials to
use, so it will have to be on hold for a while, until I decide on the
supplies and have the time for making it.
Another improvement I d like to add are detached sleeves, both matching
(I should still have just enough fabric) and contrasting, but first I
want to learn more about real kirtle construction, and maybe start
making sleeves that would be suitable also for a real kirtle.
Meanwhile, I ve worn it on Christmas (over my 1700s menswear shirt with
big sleeves) and may wear it again tomorrow (if I bother to dress up to
spend New Year s Eve at home :D )
Read all parts of the series
And here s what he explains about his drawing:
In their drawing we see a Youtube prank channel on a screen, an external
trackpad on the right (likely it s not a touch screen), and headphones.
Notice how there is no keyboard, or maybe it s folded away.
If you could ask a nice and friendly dragon anything you d like to
learn about the internet, what would it be?
In her drawing, we see again Google - it s clearly everywhere - and also
the interfaces for calling and texting someone.
To explain what the internet is, besides the fact that one
can use it for calling and listening to music, she says:
When I asked if he knew what actually happens between the device and a
website he visits, he put forth the hypothesis of the existence of some
kind of
See 
Debian Public Statement about the EU Cyber Resilience Act and the Product Liability Directive
The European Union is currently preparing a regulation "on horizontal
cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements" known as the
Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). It is currently in the final "trilogue" phase of
the legislative process. The act includes a set of essential cybersecurity and
vulnerability handling requirements for manufacturers. It will require products
to be accompanied by information and instructions to the user. Manufacturers
will need to perform risk assessments and produce technical documentation and,
for critical components, have third-party audits conducted. Discovered security
issues will have to be reported to European authorities within 25 hours (1).
The CRA will be followed up by the Product Liability Directive (PLD) which will
introduce compulsory liability for software.
While a lot of these regulations seem reasonable, the Debian project believes
that there are grave problems for Free Software projects attached to them.
Therefore, the Debian project issues the following statement: