Get Rec’d with Amanda – Volume 93

Welcome back to Get Rec’d!

For this edition, I will warn that there are a couple titles related to tech and politics. One is fiction and the other is non-fiction. That may not be everyone’s bag right now. I also have a new mystery with a twist and Sarah popped in with a recommendation.

What recommendations have your received lately? Let us know in the comments!

• Can You Solve the Murder

  

  I’m personally really curious about this one and how the interactive elements work out. 

  “Follow leads, find clues, and interrogate suspects in this intricately crafted page-turner! Will you make the right calls and catch the culprit, or will they slip through your fingers?” —G. T. Karber, author of Murdle

  One murder. Six suspects. One truth for YOU to uncover.

  YOU are the lead detective and it’s your job to investigate the most mysterious crime of your career.

  There’s been a murder at Elysium, a wellness retreat set in an English country manor. You arrive to find the body of a local businessman on the lawn – with a rose placed in his mouth. It appears he was stabbed with a gardening fork and fell to his death from the balcony above. You quickly realize that balcony can only be accessed through a locked door, the key is missing, and everyone in Elysium is now a suspect… Who did it and why? It’s up to you to figure it out.

  YOU gather the evidence and examine the clues.

  YOU choose who to interview next, and who to accuse as your prime suspect.

  But remember that every decision YOU make has consequences – and some of them will prove fatal…

  Do you have what it takes? Can YOU solve the murder? Put your sleuthing skills to the test!

  Someone you know wants to read this, right?

  Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

  This book is available from:

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  We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!

• Code Dependent

  

  This is a book I can’t stop thinking about and does a great job explaining the pervasiveness of AI. 

  Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
  Named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly.
  
  A riveting story of what it means to be human in a world changed by artificial intelligence, revealing the perils and inequities of our growing reliance on automated decision-making

  On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience—unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community.

  AI has already infiltrated our day-to-day, through language-generating chatbots like ChatGPT and social media. But it’s also affecting us in more insidious ways. It touches everything from our interpersonal relationships, to our kids’ education, work, finances, public services, and even our human rights.

  By highlighting the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from the cozy enclave of Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often-exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Murgia exposes how AI can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency, and shatter our illusion of free will.

  The ways in which algorithms and their effects are governed over the coming years will profoundly impact us all. Yet we can’t agree on a common path forward. We cannot decide what preferences and morals we want to encode in these entities—or what controls we may want to impose on them. And thus, we are collectively relinquishing our moral authority to machines.

  In Code Dependent, Murgia not only sheds light on this chilling phenomenon, but also charts a path of resistance. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small, and Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity.

  Someone you know wants to read this, right?

  Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

  This book is available from:

  As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
  We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!

• If Nuns Ruled the World

  

  This was a recommendation Sarah wanted to pass on!

  Sarah: Book some of y’all might like. It’s stories about bad ass nuns

  Veteran reporter Jo Piazza profiles ten extraordinary nuns and the causes to which they have dedicated their lives—from an eighty-three-year-old Ironman champion to a brave sister who rescues victims of human trafficking

  Meet Sister Simone Campbell, who traversed the United States challenging a Republican budget that threatened to severely undermine the well-being of poor Americans; Sister Megan Rice, who is willing to spend the rest of her life in prison if it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; and the inimitable Sister Jeannine Gramick, who is fighting for acceptance of gays and lesbians in the Catholic Church. During a time when American nuns are under attack from the very institution to which they pledge, these sisters offer inspiring, provocative counterstories that are sure to spark debate.

  Overthrowing our popular perception of nuns as killjoy schoolmarms content to live in the annals of nostalgia, Piazza defines them instead as the most vigorous catalysts of change in an otherwise constricting patriarchy.

  Someone you know wants to read this, right?

  Add to Goodreads To-Read List →
  Find on Scribd →

  This book is available from:

  As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
  We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!

• Infomocracy

  

  If you’re the kind of reader who likes to read sci-fi as a reflection of what our future may look like, one of my friends believes this book gets the most right in terms of where our country could be headed. 

  Read Infomocracy, the first book in Campbell Award finalist Malka Older’s groundbreaking cyberpunk political thriller series The Centenal Cycle, a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Series, and the novel NPR called “Kinetic and gripping.”

  • A Locus Award Finalist for Best First Novel
  • The book The Huffington Post called “one of the greatest literary debuts in recent history”
  • One of Kirkus’ “Best Fiction of 2016”
  • One of The Washington Post’s “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016”
  • One of Book Riot’s “Best Books of 2016 So Far”

  It’s been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything’s on the line.

  With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?

  Infomocracy is Malka Older’s debut novel.

  Someone you know wants to read this, right?

  Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

  This book is available from:

  As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
  We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!