BITWISE A Life in Code

David Marantz's narration does not do justice to the mind of author and software engineer David Auerbach. Marantz's narration is too dry and feels automatic rather than playful, as Auerbach's prose suggests. His voice seems more concentrated on consistency than on instilling life into the scenes that Auerbach weaves together. Bringing together the life of the mind and the "mind" of a computer, Auerbach explores his life through a series of personal essays. The result includes discussions of software updates and raising a child, programming algorithms and labeling individuals according to psychiatric designations, and developing software and using literature as a lens for life. For such a fascinating meshing of ideas, Marantz proves too conservative a narrator to do justice to this experiment in memoir. L.E. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2019]