Reading

I used to be an avid book reader. For some years, university education made me hate reading for fun, but since graduating I’ve started enjoying a book again.

Here’s a list of books that I’ve read since early 2019, along with tweet-long comments. Titles in bold are ones that I would highly recommend.
Hope you can find something interesting here as well!

2024

So I continued not reading anything in 2024, until GrafanaCon 2024. I had several hours to spend on the airport, so I picked up the equivalent of the McDonalds hamgurger of a book – something quick, dirty, devoid of nearly any sustenance, but enough to get you more hungry. This was Traitor’s Gate by Jeffrey Archer, which for some reason has nearly 12k reviews on Amazon, wth. The first book of that series has nearly 35k, so yeah, this looks like it’s another case that proves the world is a huge place.

But anyway, coming back, it was the weekend, and no bookstores were open, so I got to the nearest supermarket and got my first Stephen King novel, it all went on autopilot from there haha.

  • Hyperion by Dan Simmons THIS is how popular Sci-Fi is done. Suck it, Dune! Jokes aside, It was really gripping; I had a nightmare about a certain story in the beginning of the book, and another story nearer the end made a grown man nearly cry :) The mystery still holds, really excited to see how the second book of the series holds up.

  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick I really enjoyed all the meta-commentary on religion, consumerism, ecology, exitus acta probat, war and the entire mystery permeating through the background. After seeing Blade Runner, I was happy I’d seen a good-ish movie, but there’s no way it could capture everything underneath.

  • ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
  • Dark Tower Book series by Stephen King, books 1-3
  • Hitchiker’s Guide to Galaxy by Douglas Adams

2022 - 2023

I didn’t read much (or even at all) I think. Not sure what happened there tbh /shrug. Off the top of my mind:

  • The Culture Map by Erin Meyer This is a MUST read for anyone working at an international, distributed company. It was a recommended reading in my current employer, and we actually got to have a session with Erin herself, which was even more amazing. The ROI you’ll get by this book makes this to me, a no brainer.

  • The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla If I had to sum it up with one sentence, it’d this excerpt: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person while deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses themselves. Along with Hanlon’s Razor it’s a core prerequisite to surviving any kind of politics discussions, unfortunately.

  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman This book really helped me challenge a lot of the ways that I’m thinking and helped me identify my own cognitive biases. It’s not as a light read as I’d have liked, but nevertheless it’s one of a kind.

  • The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman I was given this book as an onboarding gift in a previous job (Beat), and I got to revisit it together with my SO this year. Back then, it was my first ‘real’ contact with philosophy and consciously choosing how to live your own life, it’s had a profound impact on me, and helped me want to explore more about the shared wisdom that humans have gathered during thousands of years on this planet on how to live a meaningful life.

  • How to build a car by Adrian Newey This was a birthday present from my SO, it had some fun stories around what goes behind the scenes in F1, but wasn’t all that gripping

  • Dune by Frank Herbert Ok, I’ll admit, it was fun, but I don’t think it deserved the praise it got, felt more like shonen Sci-Fi to me personally. After reading the synopsis of the rest of the series, it seemed to jump the shark very quickly so I’m glad I spent my time on something else. There are some subtle tones of underarching social commentary, but I don’t think I’d have made it through the entire series, just for that. Fun fact: it was interesting how the Chakobsa language has some Romani influences to it

2021

  • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
    It’s been a couple of months since I finished a book. Snow Crash was just fun! Turns out, I’ve missed that factor!
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
    Patrick uses a story to ‘teach’ some fundamentals about dysfunctions appearing within a team, and how they can be overcome. While at the time I did not enjoy the writing style too much (didn’t flow for longer periods, and sometimes sounded like Buzzfeed headlines), I liked the presented ideas and solutions. He managed to pass through his points clearly enough, and I was able to relate with situations in my current and previous teams. So, overall, it was short and useful enough to leave a good impression, and I might try reading other similar books!
  • How To Brew by John Palmer
    I got into a new hobby this year! Palmer’s excellent book answered all the questions I had, provided a new view for me when tasting beer, and fueled me with new ideas for experimentation!
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M Pirsig
    To be honest, I kinda left this in the middle. Looking forward to resuming it once I get a feel for it again. I think I prefer not being compulsive with finishing books, like I was in the past. There’s a time for each and every thing.

2020

Technical

  • The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman
    The first book I finished this year, and it was awesome. I found new respect for professional designers. Whether you need to design better smartphones, APIs, cooking utensils, or just vent about difficult-to-use elevators or stovetops, this is for you.

  • Clean Code by Robert C. Martin

  • Domain-Driven Design Distilled by Vaughn Vernon
    Unfortunately, not what I was looking for. Maybe the material was too distilled, and needed that extra context and depth

  • Cloud Native Patterns: Designing change-tolerant software by Cornelia Davis
    Overall a solid book, and it picked up the pace as it went on. Even though it doesn’t cover any greenfield advances, it succinctly describes most of the things I’ve learned by practice when working with distributed software and not in a shallow way. Huge +1 for the hands-on examples that exist.

Non-Technical

Small-scale

2019

Technical

  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann
    A masterpiece. Whether you’re designing distributed systems, want to learn more about how databases work, or are just interested in software, it’s a must-read. It’s a bit on the heavy side, but it tied together so many ideas in a beautiful way.

  • Building Microservices by Sam Newman
    I read it immediately after “Data-Intensive Applications”; the two had some material overlap so I was drawing comparisons. Honestly, it was a bit scrappy, overall meh. I didn’t enjoy the style, but still conveyed some cool ideas in an approachable way.

  • The Go Programming Language by Alan A. A. Donovan, Brian W. Kernighan

  • The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks
    I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen people recommend “The Mythical Man-Month”. I borrowed it from a friendly library, and blasted through it during the January vacation. It indeed is “the classic book on the human elements of software engineering”.

  • Cracking the Code Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell

  • The Pragmatic Programmer
    It’s one of the books I wish I had read a few years earlier. I crunched through one of the earlier editions; while the tech mentioned might be outdated, I feel it still is one of the must reads for anyone trying to enter the field.

  • Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Non-Technical

  • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
    If possible, go through it without being spoiled (don’t even read the back cover). I enjoyed the original translation as it was able to maintain a lot of exotic elements of the author’s native chinese and didn’t read like “just a book in English”.

  • So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
    This book changed the way I see my career, and software engineering in general. It helped me create a mental path of who I want to become, and how to achieve the goal to hone my craft and become an expert software engineer (it’s a long conversation).

  • Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord

  • L’Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus
    A small book I read during a car trip. It put me in thoughts and provided hours of conversations. What more could I ask for?

  • ADP 6-22 Army Leadership and the Profession by United States Government US Army
    A little too militaristic at times, but it was actually very well written, and with minimal-to-none self-help crap. I was impressed that I could relate to both good and bad leadership examples that I’ve encountered in the real world. I would definitely re-read it.

  • Soft Skills: The software developer’s life manual by John Sonmez
    A little more self-help-y than I’d like; I will admit I gave up on the last chapters about hitting the gym etc. But as far as building a career, and a name for yourself, I’m glad I read it soon, and wish I had read it even sooner.

  • How to Win Friends and Influence People by by Dale Carnegie
    I had avoided reading this book, solely due to its title. I still cringe a little when I see it on my bookcase, or when recommending it to people; but I’m actually recommending it! After all these years, it continues being relevant, although many times I thought to myself “this could be summed as be a good person”. Don’t feel guilty about skimming over some of the example the author poses to strengthen their advice.