The Enchanter

The Enchanter by Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov wrote The Enchanter in Russian while living in Paris. It was among his last works written in Russian. The novella is somewhat similar to Lolita, but much more disturbing. A man is attracted to a teen girl. He marries her mother. The mother dies. Now the man has custody of the girl. They have a flirtatious,  relationship. He fantasizes about taking the relationship to the next level and attempts to make a move one night when she is sleeping. She wakes up and starts to scream. He realizes how evil he has and runs away to attempt to destroy himself. 

The Narcissist You Know: Defending Yourself Against Extreme Narcissists in an All-About-Me Age

The term Narcissist is often abused today to describe any action that appears self absorbed. In psychiatric, there are strict criteria used to diagnose a narcissist. In our everyday world, the middle ground of "extreme narcissism" is more useful. It helpful to identify people with lack empathy and behave in a self-centered fashion in order to cope appropriately. Often these people have are responding to an earlier "shame event. Attempting to fight them at their own game is a recipe for making tempers flare. The best way to deal with them is often to just get away.
The Narcissist You Know describes many common types of narcissist by giving celebrity as well as clinical examples. Some Narcissists must always be right. Others have great charisma and the ability to make others feel great. Some will perceive everything as an attack on them and respond harshly, while drugs and other addictive behaviors are the desired response of others. The single-handed focus on self, together with the drive and willingness to step on top of others helps narcissists to excel and achieve notoriety. It also can lead to their fall, as they feel that rules don't apply to them. Confrontation rarely helps. The person will simply fight back more. In families where escape is not possible, it is important for parents to set appropriate boundaries and apply consistent rules.

Worm: The First Digital World War

I initially thought this was a fictional work. After getting into it a bit, I discovered that it was in fact non-fiction. But, it was still a good book. It details the ragtag bunch of security professionals that faught to prevent the Conficker worm from causing mass destruction. Microsoft had released a patch to fix a known vulnerability. This patch opened the door for Conficker to utilize that vulnerability to propagate in unpatched computer. It gradually accumulated a bot-net of millions of computers. Those computers used an ever-increasing list of random domains to "phone home" to get instructions. The "cabal" that was fighting the worm would buy up these domains in advance in an attempt to prevent the instructions from getting out (and to measure the worm's penetration.) The worm later outsmarted them and used peer-to-peer communications. In the end, they never discovered who created the worm. The botnet assembled was also not used for any major destructive action, being only used for a minor spamming operation. Through the process, the "cabal" members were mostly working on their own time, while the government was fairly oblivious.

The will sometimes get a little flaky on the technical details. However, it does a great job of bringing out the personalities and producing a riveting narrative on what is mostly a bunch of people sitting around computer screens. It also helps to make clear how our internet and computer systems are at the same time both extremely fragile and robust.