The plan: Finish or abandon some of those books that I have opened but seem unable to close. Then for the rest of this year I intend to 'lift heavier weights' when it comes to my choice of reading matter.
The reality: I moved out of enterprise IT consulting halfway through the year and my reading habits altered accordingly. Although I can't be sure which was cause and which was effect.
- MySideOfTheMatter? by TrumanCapote. Very short stories very well told.
- FoundersAtWork? by JessicaLivingston?. Bedtime reading of variable quality but occasional insight.
- ProudlyServingMyCorporateMasters? by AdamBarr?. Ultimately disappointing. The author doesn't seem to have gained any special insight from his time at Microsoft. The value of the book tends to consist of seeing Barr inadvertently display the same blind spots as his employer.
- ScalableInternetArchitectures by TheoSchlossnagle?. Sadly Henderson's book is mostly about building websites. This one is about the things you need in order to build/maintain/support very large scale systems.
- HowToSellAnythingToAnybody? by JoeGirard?. On a superficial level this is about being a good car salesman. On a deeper level it's about the power of reflective practice to radically improve a practitioner's effectiveness.
- ShortAndSweet? edited by SimonArmitage?
- TheTaoOfPhotography by Phillippe L. Gross and S.I. Shapiro. Not as good as TomAng?'s book of the same name. This is a superior work of taoist philosophy but poorer as a work about photography.
- Lighting by DavidPrakel?. Very good. Almost as good as his book on composition.
- TimeManagementForSystemAdministrators? by ThomasLimoncelli?. GettingThingsDone for geeks. Excellent.
- UnderstandingExposure? by BryanPeterson?. Whimsical and over my head. Maybe it will make more sense the next time I read it.
- DreamingInCode by ScottRosenberg?
- TheDip? by SethGodin?. Brilliant, inspiring and concise. I started and finished it during a long lunch.
- BlackMan? by RichardMorgan. Violent with interesting elements of sub-Nietzschean philosophy. Morgan sticks to his sci-fi meets pulp fiction formula and it works.
- EasternStandardTribe? by CoryDoctorow?. Starts out amusing but drifts into a lazy and under-motivated ending.
- SlightlyOutOfFocus? by RobertCapa?. The life, times and death of a great photographer.
- TomAng?'s TheTaoOfPhotography. Deep and delightful.
- GettingToYes by RogerFisher and WilliamUry. Highly recommended
- WhatWouldBillHicksSay?? edited by BenMack? and KristinPulkkinen?. Occasionally amusing but mostly derivative. Bill would have been disappointed.
- TooBlackTooStrong? by BenjaminZephaniah?. Polished, forthright and sometimes beautiful.
- ThePracticeEffect? by DavidBrin. Weird sci-fi meets fantasy book. Fun.
- SoYouWantToBeAWallStreetProgrammer by AndreyButov?. Authentic but manages to be both slightly out of date and overly padded.
- WildTrack? by MarkHaworthBooth?. Touching poems.
- FreddiesDead? by RichardTorres?. Shaft-esque novel with funny bits.
- TheSystemsBible? by JohnGall?. Deeply insightful if you can get past the combination of whimsy and cynicism.
- HowWouldYouMoveMountFuji by WilliamPoundstone?.
- ProgrammingInterviewsExposed? by JohnMongan? and NoahSuojanen?. Pretty good book if you're looking for a C programming job at somewhere like Microsoft.
- OnBullshit? by Harry G. Frankfurt. Short and inadvertently amusing philosophical inquiry into humbug and related concepts.
- TheContrariansGuideToLeadership? by StevenSample?
- WhenGeniusFailed by RogerLowenstein?. Pop finance. But there's still something worthwhile here.
- Composition by DavidPrakel?. Beautiful and thorough overview of all the elements of photographic composition that uses high-quality examples for illustration.
- TheMediciEffect?. Contains surprisingly little about Renaissance Italy. Some good ideas but not as good as it could have been.
- FinalImpact? by JohnBirmingham?. Alternative future meets alternative history. Fast-paced and clever but it's starting to lose steam. This installment felt like it was written on auto-pilot.
- TheAdventOfTheAlgorithm? by DavidBerlinski?. Berlinkski's idiosyncratic style finally became intolerable in this book. That's partly because he's crossed the thin line between whimsical and fictional. It's also because he's out of his depth when he's discussing computer science rather than mathematics. This book is an ambitious idea poorly executed: avoid.
- WritingEfficientPrograms? by JonBentley?. I first discovered this back in 2000 and it's even better this time around.
- London edited by BarnabyRogerson?. A delightful collection of poems about London that covers the last thousand years and spans poets from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Benjamin Zephaniah.
- ViciousCircle? by MikeCarey?. Carey doesn't offer any stylistic surprises but this was still an enjoyable story told well.
- Amazonia by James Marcus. Polished writing but the author seems to be blind to the trajectory of his employer's business model. Instead he wanders around behind the scenes without really affecting things or seeing the significance of various events. This is what the story of Hamlet would be like if it were retold from the perspective of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Not bad but not recommended either.
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