Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

nonfiction

“The Art of Agile Development” by James Shore with Diana Larsen, Gitte Klitgaard, & Shane Warden

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Recommended to me by: Sam Livingston-Gray

I read this book in little bits over the winter. Since I’m now in two technical book groups for other books, I think it’s time to admit that I got as far as I’m going to get for now. It was surprisingly readable and relevant for a book on how to organize groups to write software.

I left my first full time software job after 5 years because I just couldn’t stomach the thought of another round of waterfall development: first requirements, then design specification, then functional specification, then code. With bonus Gantt charts. More recently, I’ve worked for three companies doing some version of Agile, and while none of them have strictly adhered to all the practices, they were all a big improvement over waterfall development.

In 2001, a group of experienced software developers got together and hammered out:

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

  • Individuals and interactions over process and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan

The idea is to develop software in small bite-size changes so that it can adapt to continuously changing requirements, and to value teamwork among developers and with designers and customers rather than working in isolation. “People are the most important factor in software development success.” Agile includes automated tests written along with code, deploying software quickly, and working in pairs or larger groups.

The book includes how to start fresh with Agile when creating a new team, or adopting it in a possibly reluctant team or management. Management tends to resist the fluidity of agile teams because timelines and outcomes develop over time rather than being up front commitments (that are rarely met). At its heart Agile is about managing change, and the book includes thorough advice and analysis about the change to using Agile.

James Shore emphasizes having the whole team, which includes developers, designers, customer experts, and product managers, in the same room where they can easily ask each other questions and collaborate, as well as overhear details that might be relevant to what they’re working on. A remote team shares a Slack channel and uses video meetings to achieve some of the same benefits. “[Agile teams] are optimistic, enthusiastic, and genuinely enjoy working together. There’s a spirit of excellence, but it’s not overly serious.”

“Always ask, always help.” The team as a whole moves faster if everyone prioritizes helping each other get unstuck. It doesn’t help anyone for a developer to spend two days trying to figure out a problem that someone else could help solve in an hour of pairing on it together.

Psychological safety means team members are safe to disagree, safe to not know (yet), safe to ask for help. Enable all voices, be open about mistakes, be curious, learn how to give and receive feedback. Say “yes, and…” to people’s ideas.

There is a lot about estimates and breaking tasks into “right-size” pieces and the velocity of the team – how many stories get done in a given period. My current group chews through a lot of work in a two-week period, but we don’t estimate tasks ahead of time. Some tasks take an hour, and some take weeks because there are unexpected complications.

The book advocates for white boards and sticky notes, which don’t work as well in a remote team. Planning is done by moving sticky notes around.

This book is recommended for anyone writing software, whether their team is officially Agile or not. There are a lot of great practices, and it helps to know what some of the options are even if a team is only using some of them.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Fire Trail” by Maureen Larkin Ustenci

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Subtitle: A Mother’s Journey Through Grieving

Recommended to me by: the author

Maureen Larkin Ustenci lucidly shares the raw shock and shattering grief of losing her beloved only son to sudden death in a mountain lake just after he graduated from high school. She also shares joyful stories of raising him in multicultural Berkeley with her Turkish husband. This is a love letter to her son Efejon, to her husband Mustafa, to the city of Berkeley, and to the community that surrounded them and bore them up in their terrible grief.

The book moved me to tears and also delighted me with its depiction of family members, friends, traveling in Turkey, and raising a child who never stopped talking. It dips into the depths and rises again, acknowledging both unbearable pain and the people who reached out again and again to help them bear it with kindness, generosity, and warmth.

Available at Amazon.

“Katarína” by Kathryn Winter

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Recommended to me by: Folk dancing with the author

I was chatting with Kathryn at a folk dance party, and explained how my grandparents had to leave Germany because of the Holocaust. She brightened in recognition and said, “I was a hidden child during the Holocaust.” Like Anne Frank, but she lived. I said, “That must have been hard!” She said no, at the time she thought the work camps were like summer camps.

Her lightly fictionalized memoir is beautifully written, a series of child’s-eye vignettes full of details about life in Slovakia at the time. It is also harrowing to read. Kathryn shows difficult events and physical and emotional pain in response, but doesn’t dwell on it. The child Katarína feels both joy and sorrow strongly, and keeps moving forward with fierce resilience. She survived through both inner strength and luck, through care from others and a loving response to care.

Highly recommended. In this time of rising fascism we need to understand fascism’s detailed cruelty to a child. This happened in living memory. We are well along on the road to it happening again. It needs to stop.

Available via Biblio.com

“Too Flexible to Feel Good” by Celest Pereira and Adell Bridges

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Subtitle: A Practical Roadmap to Managing Hypermobility

Recommended to me by: Andy

Celest Pereira and Adell Bridges explain hypermobility and how to address it with a mix of the latest neuroscience, cartoon characters, and photographs of themselves doing yoga poses and exercises.

They say that hypermobility spectrum disorder occurs in up to 25% of the population. They are addressing the mild-to-medium forms of the issue, not the extreme form which is Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Hypermobile people have overly stretchy connective tissue, which causes issues not just with their joints, but also with proprioception (sensing one’s own body), digestion, and anxiety.

It makes sense that hypermobile people are drawn to yoga where they can be immediately successful, but it is also easy to practice yoga in a way that causes injuries. This book has a series of explanations and exercises on how to add strength and core support to protect joints prone to overstretching.

They call for mindfulness and careful experimentation to find what works best for each body. They advocate for using active range of motion, going as far as muscles can take you on their own, rather than passive range of motion, pulling yourself deeper into stretches by force. For example, seated forward bend with hands reaching forward, rather than with hands around feet pulling you further into the stretch.

I appreciated concrete permission not to hold still in a pose if my body is done with it, not to pull my shoulder blades down when I’m reaching my arms up, and not to pull myself deeper into stretches. I didn’t feel like I was quite the target market for this book, because I don’t need cartoon characters to lighten up neuroscience, and I do a little yoga and a lot of other kinds of exercise. I might be mildly hypermobile, but I’m not a yoga superstar.

Recommended if you’re hypermobile (they have a few easy movements to check), do a lot of yoga, and want to get stronger and more aligned to protect your joints. Mindfulness and body awareness can help us all.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe

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Recommended to me by: Soph

I was introduced to Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir pronouns) via eir lovely comic about folk dancing. Eir memoir is full of lively, beautifully drawn panels and naked honesty about the painful moments of growing up genderqueer.

Maia Kobabe shares the joyful moments as well, including er warm connection with er parents, sibling, neighbors, and friends. E explains that e felt a startling wave of joy on encountering the Spivak pronouns e/em/eir, and that’s why e uses them.

This came across to me as a book for adults, since it includes some sexually explicit drawings and discussion about a vibrator, etc. At the same time, Maia Kobabe says it is for genderqueer kids to see other people like them.

Maia Kobabe’s website includes a sample of Gender Queer.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Six Reasons to Travel” by Stuart Gelzer

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Subtitle: an American Singer in Georgia

Recommended to me by: Jen Morris

As an enthusiastic fan of Georgian singing in general and Trio Kavkasia in particular, I was eager to read about the trio’s adventures in the Republic of Georgia as shared by one of its members. These three American men spent time in Georgia both studying the language in the capital city, Tbilisi, and touring the countryside to learn songs from master singers.

The book is well-written and full of engaging details about places and people. At the same time, it took me a long time to finish reading. It is a set of semi-independent essays, and some of the essays have more drinking and violence in them than I’m comfortable reading about. It is a book very much centered on men, with women relegated to the background or referred to disparagingly, like the “kerchiefed biddy” mopping a church. While women do sing in Georgia, there is a whole tradition of men sitting around the table drinking, singing, and eating, while women serve food they spent days preparing.

Toward the end of the book the focus returns to the theory and practice of learning Georgian songs. Stuart Gelzer looks back on a religious ritual he participated in without learning about it beforehand and says, “I actually like to stay a little lost, a little confused. […] I like the flow of apparent chaos, the hilarious unpredictability, the feeling of being a perpetual outsider, the challenge of being clueless.” This cheerful attitude born of luck and privilege gives him access to wonderful musical adventures and a deep knowledge of Georgian singing.

The whole time I wondered when the six reasons to travel would be explained. Looking at the beginning of the book again to write this review, I noticed a poem before the table of contents.

to leave one’s troubles behind one
to earn a living
to acquire learning
to practice good manners
to meet honorable men
for the pleasantness of being liked for oneself
— Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia

Recommended for anyone interested in the nitty-gritty of traveling and learning songs in Georgia.

Available at bookshop.org.