I'm someone continually torn between the books I enjoy reading and the books I ought to read. Happiness consists of reading the enjoyable and discovering that they are canonical.
The plan: Finish or abandon some of those books that I have opened but seem unable to close. I want to weave some themes into this year's reading: Python; Java; debugging; writing; parsing; problem solving; insightful analysis of economics and business; distributed systems; heterophily and generating the ability to 'think different'; new abstractions; music; photography; breaking out of the anglo-sphere and reaching out to interesting authors who don't happen to speak English. As if all that weren't enough I'm also going to try to write more reviews this year.
books written:
books to find:
- TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEngineering?: LearningToLearn? by RichardHamming?
- ...
books to read:
- AdamSmith?'s TheWealthOfNations
- GeorgePolya?'s HowToSolveIt
- BeautifulCode?
- TheMythsOfInnovation?
- RestfulWebServices?
- BecomingATechnicalLeader
- HadoopTheDefinitiveGuide?
- Practical Packet Analysis
- The art of unix programming
- Debugging by Andreas Zeller
- How to solve it
- Parsing by Dick Grune
- What colour is your parachute?
- ...
books to re-read this year:
books to re-read annually:
- TheCreativeHabit? by TwylaTharp?
- HowToBeRich? by FelixDennis?
- ...
currently reading:
- OnWar by CarlVonClausewitz?
- WorkingEffectivelyWithLegacyCode by MichaelFeathers
- DataAndReality? by WilliamKent?
- TheArtOfProjectManagement? by ScottBerkun?.
- ViewFromTheCliff? by LynnWeiss?.
- TheEntrepreneurialEngineer? by DavidGoldberg?. Really valuable information presented in the dullest way imaginable.
- TheBlackSwan? by NassimNicholasTaleb?. Mind-expanding but takes far too long to make his point.
- HigherOrderPerl?
- MovingTowardsStillness?
- InformationRules? by HalVarian? and CarlShapiro?
books I've just finished reading:
- Freedom by DanielSuarez?. Fun sequel to the Daemon but not as imaginative as the first book.
- BringingNothingToTheParty? by PaulCarr?. Wonderful evocation of London's dotcom bubble years. Seeing people you know get mentioned in a novel about the author's excessively hedonistic youth is a little disturbing.
- ReWork by JasonFried? and DavidHeinemeierHansson
- DeveloperEvangelism? by ChristianHeilmann?. Detailed outline of the lessons the author learned in his time working as a Developer Evangelist at Yahoo.
- MusicTwoPointZero by Gerd Leonhard. The author's a futurist so much of it sounds breathless and occasionally naive. The book's old enough now that many of his timescales have been disproved but the trends still support his theories.
- CognitiveSurplus? by ClayShirky?
- The Necessary Art of Persuasion by Jay C. Conger. Good book let down by terrible examples (Microsoft Bob and the American car industry in Detroit) which have not aged well.
- ...
This page is
MyBookAboutMeByMeMyself
Hi Ade, how's it going with Clausewitz? --
HuwLloyd
Very slowly. I think I got spoiled by authors like Machiavelli, Sun Tsu and the biographer of John Boyd. I suspect I'm going to be reading OnWar for quite a few more months.--ade
My impression is that books like OnWar, TheWealthOfNations, TheVarietiesOfReligiousExperience?, have concentric elements of cohesion. That is, there are facts, there are stories, there are ideas and concepts, and then there is the larger interconnectedness of the stories. Similar perhaps to the design levels one would go through from functions through patterns, through representative objects and their layers to considering a whole working and self-supporting environment. I hope that helps. -- HuwLloyd
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