Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel (revisited)


It seems years ago now since I first read Karl Fogel’s Producing Open Source Software. That’s because it is. The book, made available at producingoss.com in 2005 and published by O’Reilly in 2006, was one of the first to offer an accessible and thoughtful look at how to run a successful free software project. Back in 2005 and 2006, that was something I was keenly interested in, not least because I was working for OSS Watch at the time.

Time passes. Things change. Even the world of free and open source software changes over time.

I was delighted to learn recently that Karl Fogel is setting about producing a revised and updated edition of Producing Open Source Software.  What’s more there is an easy way that interested individuals can help this project come to fruition. Karl has posted his project on Kickstarter, which is a funding platform for creative projects. Check out Karl’s video on his project page. And then consider making a small contribution to help kickstart the project. It’s a great opportunity to make a small contribution to the ongoing success of free and open source software.

Plus, just as with the first edition, the new edition will be released online under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike licence so it too will be freely available to read and share with others everywhere and anywhere.

Very much looking forward to the new edition of Producing Open Source Software.

Tenth of December by George Saunders


Astonishingly assured writing of characters so hesitant and fragile that your heart breaks for them. This is George Saunders at his best. With stories so lean that each individual word is vitally important. And even the nuance is nuanced.

Every story in this collection deserves mention as both typical of Saunders’ earlier style, and adventurously striking new ground. With “Escape from Spiderhead” and “My Chivalric Fiasco” we see the satirical Saunders’ alternate future, complete with chemically induced mood, emotion and diction. These are at once lighter than some of his previous satires but perhaps (or because of that) even more cutting. A Saunders protagonist may hope for, even expect, at least within in his own mind, the world to bend itself to his needs and goals, but will find himself almost invariably brought back to reality, or lower, when the world insists on its own integrity.

Saunders is a master of the exorbitant monologue, here represented by “Exhortation” and “The Semplica Girl Diaries”, or the sad sack “Al Roosten”. But perhaps even more impressive are the stories which function as dualistic monologues—not dialogues, to be sure, but rather alternating monologues. Both the opening, shockingly surprising, story, “Victory Lap”, and the concluding title story, “Tenth of December”, take this form. The latter must surely stand as one of the finest, saddest, and bravest short stories I have ever encountered. With characters so vulnerable, so susceptible to destruction by themselves and others, only Saunders’ love for them can sustain them, even help them succeed beyond their own imaginings.

The writing is so swift and spare that a story almost sweeps past you. So take the opportunity to read it again and you will find that you will want to read it yet again, even. Highly recommended.

The Blondes by Emily Schultz


Mesmerizing. Like Cormac McCarthy on estrogen. Emily Schultz tells a gripping, even haunting, tale in The Blondes, that is subtle, sophisticated, sensitive, quirkily observant, and horrific.

Hazel Hayes is a Ph.D. candidate in Communications Studies spending a term in New York City to pursue her research and, in effect, to avoid her thesis supervisor, Karl Mann, with whom she has inadvisably had an affair. Absence, from Karl and from her other friends in Toronto, does nothing to alleviate her mixed feelings or help her focus on her thesis. And the fact that she has just learned that she is pregnant doesn’t help matters. Her life, her whole world, is a mess. But that’s nothing compared to the mess that is about to ensue when a pandemic of rabies-like madness begins to strike blondes and those whose hair colour has been made blonde through dyeing. From an initial attack that Hazel witnesses in the New York subway to outbreaks at JFK and further afield (the Nordic countries are severely at risk), Hazel must negotiate her way through this field of mayhem in order to get back to Toronto.

That makes it sound like a horror story, but it’s really a meditation on representations of women in culture and advertising, a commentary on systemic sexism, a reflection on a woman’s control over her own body (exacerbated by Hazel’s uncertainty over whether she wants to carry her foetus to term), a searching examination of varieties of grief, and yes, of course, also a bit of a horror story. (Interestingly, “blond/blonde” is one of the few adjectives in written English to retain its masculine and feminine grammatical genders.)

The writing is measured, thoughtful, well paced, and crisp. It was a pleasure to read and think about and I would gladly read anything else Emily Schultz chooses to write. Recommended.

The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford


Anyone who followed Frank Bascombe through Richard Ford’s previous novels in this trilogy (The Sportswriter and Independence Day) will be forgiven for some trepidation on picking up the final instalment, which is situated during the Thanksgiving Day weekend of 2000. American holidays haven’t been good to Frank. They tend to induce introspection, disruption from the usual routine, and interactions with one’s family, all of which are somewhat risky activities. And for Frank, who is now settled in what he calls his ‘Permanent Period’, such moments of personal and national soul searching usual trigger transformation. A change is certain for the country, mired though it is in the aftermath of the disputed Bush-Gore presidential election. But what kind of change can come for someone in his Permanent Period? What’s next, other than the ‘Next Level’, and what can that be other than death itself?

Frank is estranged from his first wife. His second wife, Sally, has been gone for nearly a year, having followed her former husband (who had been presumed dead) to the Scottish island of Mull. He cannot survive even a brief conversation with his son, Paul, without nearly coming to blows. His daughter, Clarissa, is pursuing her own transformations. His Tibetan colleague in Realty-Wise is itching to climb another rung on the great ladder of being. And Frank is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. Anxious might be too modest a word to describe Frank’s state of mind.

Once again, Richard Ford paints a masterly picture of the modern condition in this gripping conclusion to his Frank Bascombe trilogy. The prose is dense with hesitant metaphor and promiscuous symbolism as Frank asserts, contradicts, and reasserts himself, more acted upon than acting, and incapable, seemingly, of transacting the smallest bit of business without disaster—physical, emotional, spiritual—rearing up and biting him. It’s hard to imagine a character more in need of our sympathy, or less able or likely to accept it.

Of course, endings are very much the theme of The Lay of the Land. One way or another, it’s the end for Frank. Eschatology breeds an intemperate clamouring for teleology. But whether Frank can piece together his life as a whole is an open question. And the end, when it comes, is always a surprise, however much we prepare ourselves.

Recommended without reservation.

Reading – a year in review, 2012

2012 was a very good year for reading. I discovered new authors whose work I enjoyed: Tove Jansson, Richard Ford, Susanna Clarke, Colm Tóibín. The book club whose meetings I attend continued to give satisfaction. I reread a few favourite novels. And I discovered some new favourites.  I also wrote short reviews of each book I read this past year and posted them on LibraryThing, a few of which I re-posted here on this blog. I’ll continue with that in the year ahead.

Stats from my 2012 reading list:

  • 30 were borrowed from our public library
  • 15 have Canadian authors
  • 21 were chosen due to personal recommendations from friends
  • 11 are by authors who appear more than once on the 2012 list
  • 2 were being reread
  • 3 were read aloud by my wife and me
  • 22 are non-fiction

Books read in 2012 (88):

  • Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: volume 2, Within a Budding Grove
  • Baker, Nicholson. Vox
  • Fish, Stanley. How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One
  • Watson, Mark. Eleven
  • Graff, Gerald and Birkenstein, Cathy. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Persuasive Writing
  • Murakami, Haruki. Sputnik Sweetheart
  • Nussbaum, Martha C. Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life
  • Tóibín, Colm. Brooklyn
  • Oatley, Keith. Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction
  • Roth, Philip. American Pastoral
  • Smiley, Jane. 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
  • Stein, Sol. How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them
  • Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
  • Cossé, Laurence. A Novel Bookstore
  • Egan, Jennifer. A Visit From the Goon Squad
  • Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility
  • Clarke, Susanna. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories
  • Spurling, Hilary. Matisse: the life
  • Babbitt, Susan E. Impossible Dreams: Rationality, Integrity, and Moral Imagination
  • Stock, Brian. Ethics Through Literature: Ascetic and Aesthetic Reading in Western Culture
  • Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
  • Morrison, Toni. Beloved
  • Moore, Lisa. February
  • Jansson, Tove. Fair Play
  • Pym, Barbara. The Sweet Dove Died
  • Lapeña, Shari. Happiness Economics
  • Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending
  • MacLeod, Alexander (compiler), Pick, Alison (compiler), and Selecky, Sarah (compiler). The Journey Prize Stories 23
  • Moore, Lorrie. A Gate at the Stairs
  • Patchett, Ann. State of Wonder
  • Jansson, Tove. The Summer Book
  • Fish, Stanley. Save the World on Your Own Time
  • Currie, Gregory. Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories
  • Goldie, Peter. On Personality
  • Iyer, Lars. Dogma
  • Tournier, Michel. Vendredi ou La Vie sauvage
  • Yoshimoto, Banana. Asleep
  • Grossman, Lev. The Magicians
  • Poulin, Jacques. Mister Blue
  • Shields, Carol. Jane Austen
  • Grossman, Lev. The Magician King
  • Stewart, Trenton Lee. The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict
  • Sileika, Antanas. Underground
  • Murakami, Haruki. The Elephant Vanishes
  • Hedges, Peter. The Heights
  • Rosoff, Meg. How I Live Now
  • Hample, Zack. Watching Baseball Smarter
  • Mandanna, Sarita. Tiger Hills
  • Benioff, David. City of Thieves
  • Donoghue, Emma. Room
  • Calvino, Italo. Why Read The Classics?
  • Mars-Jones, Adam. Noriko Smiling
  • Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird
  • Tyler, Anne. The Beginner’s Goodbye
  • Jansson, Tove. A Winter Book
  • Prose, Francine. My New American Life
  • Cascardi, Anthony J. (ed.) Literature and the Question of Philosophy
  • Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre
  • Perkins-Valdez, Dolen. Wench
  • St. John Mandel, Emily. The Lola Quartet
  • Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights
  • Lamott, Anne. Bird By Bird
  • Jansson, Tove. The True Deceiver
  • Hough, Robert. Dr. Brinkley’s Tower
  • Baker, Nicholson. The Way the World Works
  • McEwan, Ian. Sweet Tooth
  • Saunders, George. In Persuasion Nation
  • Ford, Richard. The Sportswriter
  • Henderson, Eleanor. Ten Thousand Saints
  • Chabon, Michael. Telegraph Avenue
  • Walter, Jess. Beautiful Ruins
  • Strube, Cordelia. Milosz
  • Fforde, Jasper. The Woman Who Died A Lot
  • Christie, Michael (compiler), Kuitenbrouwer, Kathryn (compiler), and Winter, Kathleen (compiler). The Journey Prize Stories 24
  • Munro, Alice. Dear Life
  • Sloan, Robin. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel
    Perrotta, Tom (ed.). The Best American Short Stories 2012
  • Ellmann, Lucy. Mimi
  • Goldie, Peter. The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind
  • Moore, Lorrie. Self-Help
  • Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue
  • Ford, Richard. Independence Day
  • Morgenstern, Erin. The Night Circus
  • McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin
  • Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go
  • DeWitt, Patrick. The Sisters Brothers
  • Fitzgerald, Penelope. The Golden Child
  • Jonasson, Jonas. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared