Following on from Carisenda’s ‘book reading shame’, here is a list of what I got through in 2006. In 2005 I finished every Stephen Ambrose book he’d published and generally overdosed on WWII factual history a bit too much. Men of Valour is worth a read if you’re interested in getting introduced to that type of thing.
Last year I read into the history of programming, hackers and Apple a bit—and while visiting Japan I was introduced to Haruki Murakami, without a doubt the best fictional work I have read in years. His books remind me of stories you’d expect from a Studio Ghibli production.
(I know some people can read this many books in a couple of months, I tell myself, reading slowly, I’m getting more out of them …)
- Programming Ruby – The Pickaxe, worth its weight in gold
- Out of the Inner Circle: A Hacker’s Guide to Computer Security – describes some very old hacking techniques used in the early days of the internet
- Hackers – a great book documenting the history of hacking and the advances in computing from MIT mainframes to modern day (well, circa 1989) home computers. Including some interesting true stories on Wozniak, Gates and the rise and fall of Seirra games
- Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage – astronomer Clifford Stoll at Berkeley, tracks a hacker from western Europe for several months.
- Getting Real – 37 Signals, on building simple, focused software that does just what you need and nothing you don’t.
- iWoz – How Apple came to be, Wozniak’s story.
- The Victors – Stephen Ambrose
- Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – short and to the point, essential reading
- Why Software Projects Fail – an excellent read for anyone trying to argue the benefits of agile methods
- No Silver Bullet – Brooks (PDF)
- The Wind Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
- Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
Anyone else got any books to recommend ?
—update You can also take a look at what feeds I subscribe to and read on a semi-daily basis.
