Book Log

Being a partial list of books that I have read, mostly intended as a record for my own benefit. I have excluded esoteric technical books, manuals, travel guides, etcetera.

Currently Reading

• Bitter Experience Has Taught Me by Nicholas Lezard
• Freedom To Think: Protecting a Fundamental Human Right in the Digital Age by Susie Alegre
• The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, Charles Green and Robert Galford

2023

Non-Fiction

• Exchange Traded Funds and Index Funds: How to Use Tracker Funds in Your Invement Portfolio by David Stevenson
• The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save It by Stuart Maconie
• A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout
• Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono

Fiction

• A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

2022

The 20 Books I Most Enjoyed Reading in 2022

My favourite fiction and non-fiction books of the year.

Ian NelsonIan Nelson

Non-Fiction

• A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
• And Finally: Matters of Life and Death by Henry Marsh
• Coal Black Mornings by Brett Anderson
• Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind And What To Do About It by Azeem Azhar
• Flow: The Psychology of Happiness by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards and Neal Ford
• If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable by Mikko Hypponen
• The Gift of a Radio: My Childhood and other Train Wrecks by Justin Webb
• Good Pop Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker
• Hope and Glory: A People's History of Modern Britain by Stuart Maconie
• The Instant by Amy Liptrot
• Learn How to Solve Cryptic Crosswords: A Course for Beginners by Henry Howarth
• Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein
• No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs Of A Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson
• Nothing But The Truth: A Memoir by The Secret Barrister
• Originals: How Non-Conformists Change The World by Adam Grant
• Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home by Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel
• The Outrun by Amy Liptrot
• Prisoners Of Geography by Tim Marshall
• Quantum Computing: How It Works and How It Could Change The World by Amit Katwala
• Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle
• Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder
• Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot by Mark Vanhoenacker
• Software Architecture: The Hard Parts. Modern Trade-Off Analyses for Distributed Architectures by Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage and Zhamak Dehghani
• Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann Hari
• These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore
• Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever by Robin Wigglesworth

Fiction

• Bewilderment by Richard Powers
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• A Clockwork Orange by Antony Burgess
• Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Pulse by Julian Barnes

2021

The Books I Most Enjoyed Reading in 2021

The Top 5And Away... [https://amzn.to/3jwAUs6] by Bob Mortimer As was the case in 2020, my favourite book of the year was an autobiography;this time by national treasure Bob Mortimer. Laugh out loud funny in manyplaces, elsewhere this is tinged with melancholy and the realisation that, forall h…

Ian NelsonIan Nelson

Non-Fiction

• A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in the Age of Overload by Cal Newport
• And Away... by Bob Mortimer
• Anti-Social: The Secret Diary of an Anti-Social Behaviour Officer by Nick Pettigrew
• Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson
• Built on a Lie: The Rise and Fall of Neil Woodford and the Fate of Middle England's Money by Owen Walker
• Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake
• Clean Agile: Back to Basics by Robert C. Martin
• Crossroads: In Search of the Moments that Changed Music by Mark Radcliffe
• Early Retirement: Insights and Advice from 51 Early Retirees by Gary Montavon
• Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies by The Secret Barrister
• Four Thousand Weeks: Time And How To Use It by Oliver Burkeman
• How Not to Be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind by James O'Brien
• How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers by Tim Harford
• Investing for Growth: How to make money by only buying the best companies in the world by Terry Smith
• Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future by Pope Francis
• Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain's Poorest Towns by Kerry Hudson
• Notes From a Big Country: Journey Into the American Dream by Bill Bryson (re-read, originally read 1999)
• Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson (re-read, originally read 1997)
• The Rules of Living Well by Richard Templar
• Small Data: The Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends by Martin Lindstrom
• Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time curated by Titus Winters, Tom Manschreck and Hyrum Wright
• The Times Style Guide: A Guide to English Usage by Brunskill (Editor)
• This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay
• Wealth Management: How to Plan, Invest and Protect Your Financial Future by Jason Butler

Fiction

• Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan
• Luster by Raven Leilani
• Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Should We Stay Or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver
• The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam
• The Very Nice Box by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman

2020

The 12 Books I Most Enjoyed Reading in 2020

The lockdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic allowed much reading time in 2020. Here are 12 of the books that I most enjoyed reading in this tough year.

Ian NelsonIan Nelson

Non-Fiction

• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
• Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News by Emily Maitlis
• The Art of People Skills: Little-Known But Powerful Social Skills No One Is Talking About to Improve Your Relationships Instantly by John Guzman
• The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite In The Modern Age by Claudia Hammond
• The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data by David Spiegelhalter
• At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
• Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte (re-read, originally read 2007)
• Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhil Plokhy
• Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
• Down Under: Travels from a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (re-read, originally read 2000)
• Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin
• Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Dr Kate Bowler
• The Financial Times Guide to Investment Trusts: Unlocking the City's Best Kept Secret by John Baron
• Ghost In The Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick
• The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through My Childhood by Bill Bryson
• The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
• Micromastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Unlock Your Potential to Achieve Anything by Robert Twigger
• Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson
• Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking by Matthew Syed
• Remote: Office Not Required by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney by Bob Iger
• The Secret GP: What Really Goes On Inside Your Doctor's Surgery by Dr Max Skittle
• Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli
• Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously by Jessica Pan
• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner
• Thinking, Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Through The Window: Seventeen Essays (and one short story) by Julian Barnes
• The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data by Gene Kim
• Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward Tufte (re-read, originally read 2007)
• Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

Fiction

• Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
• The Liar by Stephen Fry
• Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
• Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (re-read, originally read 1996)
• Worst. Person. Ever. by Douglas Coupland
• The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell (re-read, originally read 2001)

2019

The 20 Books I Most Enjoyed Reading in 2019

In 2019 I made an effort to read more books. Here are the 20 that I enjoyed the most.

Ian NelsonIan Nelson

Non-Fiction

• 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
• The Behavioral Investor by Daniel Crosby
• The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
• Coders: Who They Are, What They Think and How They Are Changing the World by Clive Thompson
• The Creativity Code: How AI Is Learning to Write, Paint and Think by Marcus du Sautoy
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy by Tim Harford
• Gotta Get Theroux This: My Life and Strange Times on Television by Louis Theroux
• Hello World: How to Be Human in the Age of the Machine by Hannah Fry
• Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win The Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
• How to be Right: ...in a world gone wrong by James O'Brien
• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
• Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
• Mindfulness: The Eight-Week Meditation Programme for a Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman
• Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass by Darren McGarvey
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
• Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell
• Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
• University of Berkshire Hathaway: 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting by Daniel Pecaut
• Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions and Get REAL Work Done by Jocelyn Glei
• The Silent Guides by Professor Steve Peters
• The Visual MBA: A Quick Guide to Everything You'll Learn in Two Years of Business School by Jason Barron
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith
• Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back by Guy Shrubsole
• Why We Get The Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman

Fiction

• Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo
• Love Etc by Julian Barnes
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Talking It Over by Julian Barnes
• The Only Story by Julian Barnes

2018

Non-Fiction

• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness by Professor Steve Peters
• Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
• Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
• Levels of Life by Julian Barnes
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain
• Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
• The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken by The Secret Barrister
• A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
• Skin In The Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Successful Stock Picking Strategies by Simon Thompson
• Talking with Tech Leads: From Novices to Practitioners by Patrick Kua
• The Zulu Principle: Making Extraordinary Profits from Ordinary Shares by Jim Slater

Fiction

• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
• The Man I Think I Know by Mike Gayle
• The Man On The Middle Floor by Elizabeth Moore
• Metroland by Julian Barnes
• Money by Martin Amis
• The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
• Transition by Iain Banks
• Walking on Glass by Iain Banks

2017

Non-Fiction

• 100 Baggers: Stocks That Return 100-To-1 And How To Find Them by Christopher W. Mayer
• The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World by Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen
• Harriman's New Book of Investing Rules: The Do's And Don'ts of the World's Best Investors by Christopher Parker
• How to Pick Quality Shares: A Three-Step Process for Selecting Profitable Stocks by Phil Oakley
• The Rules of Life by Richard Templar
• The Rules of Wealth by Richard Templar
• Stock Picking for Profit by Simon Thompson
• Trading Secrets: 20 Hard And Fast Rules To Help You Beat The Stock Market by Simon Thompson
• Zero to £1 Million: My Stock Market Lessons and Techniques by James Smith

Fiction

• How To Stop Time by Matt Haig

2016

Non-Fiction

• Algorithms To Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian
• The Big Book of Cycling for Beginners: Everything a new cyclist needs to know to gear up and start riding by Tori Bortman
• Come Into My Trading Room: A Complete Guide to Trading by Alexander Elder
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
• Disrupted: Ludicrous Misadventures in the Tech Startup Bubble by Dan Lyons
• The Financial Times Guide to Investing: The Definitive Companion to Investment and the Financial Markets by Glen Arnold
• How To Be a Knowledge Ninja: Study Smarter. Focus Better. Achieve More. by Graham Allcott
• How To Be a Productivity Ninja. Worry Less, Achieve More and Love What You Do by Graham Allcott
• How To Start Building Your Wealth Investing In The Stock Market by Andrew Stotz
• Investment Madness: How Psychology Affects Your Investing... And What To Do About It by John R. Nofsinger
• The Naked Trader: How Anyone Can Make Money Trading Shares by Robbie Burns
• The Naked Trader's Guide to Spread Betting: How to Make Money From Shares In Up Or Down Markets by Robbie Burns
• Trade Like a Shark: The Naked Trader on How To Eat And Not Get Eaten In The Stock Market by Robbie Burns

Fiction

• The Crow Road by Iain Banks

2015

Non-Fiction

• Calmer, Easier, Happier Boys: The Revolutionary Programme That Transforms Family Life by Noel Janis-Norton
• Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
• The Politico's Guide To The 2015 General Election by Iain Dale

2014

Non-Fiction

• Families and How To Survive Them by John Cleese and Robin Skynner
• Harry's Last Stand: How the World My Generation Built is Falling Down, and What We Can Do To Save It by Harry Leslie Smith
• NoSQL Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Emerging World of Polyglot Persistence
• Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Tonianne DeMaria Barry and Jim Benson
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford
• So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport
• Technical Blogging: Turn Your Expertise Into a Remarkable Online Presence by Antonio Cangiano
• Think Like a Freak: Secrets of the Rogue Economist by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
• What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

Fiction

• Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
• Stonemouth by Iain Banks

2013

Non-Fiction

• Autobiography by Morrissey
• The Developer's Code by Ka Wai Cheung
• Driving Technical Change: Why People On Your Team Don't Act On Good Ideas, and How To Convince Them They Should by Terrence Ryan
• Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience by Shaun Usher
• The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving And Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weinberg

2012

Non-Fiction

• Agile Coaching by Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley
• The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software by Jonathan Rasmusson
• How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
• Super Systems 2 by Doyle Brunson

Fiction

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

2011

Non-Fiction

• Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work & Life by Stuart Diamond
• Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen et al
• The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development by Chad Fowler
• Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt
• Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages by Bruce A. Tate
• What's Stopping You?: Why Smart People Don't Always Reach Their Potential And How You Can by Robert Kelsey and Luke Johnson

Fiction

• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

2010

Non-Fiction

• Census: The Expert Guide by Peter Christian
• The Genealogist's Internet by Peter Christian
• Kanban by David J. Anderson

2009

Non-Fiction

• Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software by Michael Nygard

2008

Non-Fiction

• Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk by Paul M. Duvall et al
• Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers by Mark Richards and John Alderman
• Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity by David Allen
• Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North by Stuart Maconie
• Test-Driven Development by Kent Beck
• Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers

2007

Non-Fiction

• Agile Database Techniques by Scott Ambler
• Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions by Luke Hohmann
• Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software by Mike Gunderloy
• Herding Cats: Self-Help for Programmers Who Lead Programmers by Hank Rainwater
• Implementation Patterns by Kent Beck
• Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work With Them In Some Capacity by Joel Spolsky
• Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky
• Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design by Scott Ambler
• Slack by Tom DeMarco
• xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code by Gerard Meszaros

2006

Non-Fiction

• Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History by Mark D. Herber
• Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies by Romilla Ready and Kate Burton
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte

2005

Non-Fiction

• Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play by Mark Forster
• The Life and Death of St. Kilda by Tom Steel
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler

Fiction

• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

2004

Non-Fiction

• The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World by Christopher Duncan
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler

Fiction

• Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend
• Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland
• Past Mortem by Ben Elton

2003

Non-Fiction

• Against the Wall by Simon Yates

Fiction

• Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener
• Hey Nostradamus! A Novel by Douglas Coupland

2002

Non-Fiction

• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve C. McConnell
• The Munros: Scottish Mountaineering Club Hillwalkers' Guide Vol one
• Scotland: The Wild Places by Colin Prior

Fiction

• Dinner for Two by Mike Gayle

2001

Non-Fiction

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Fiction

• The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell

2000

Non-Fiction

• Down Under by Bill Bryson
• Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland
• This Game of Ghosts by Joe Simpson
• Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

Fiction

• The Business by Iain Banks
• Complicity by Iain Banks
• Paper by John McCabe
• Turning Thirty by Mike Gayle

1999

Non-Fiction

• Notes From A Big Country by Bill Bryson
• Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design by Vincent Flanders and Michael Willis

Fiction

• Adrian Mole: the Cappuccino Years by Sue Townsend
• Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
• Inconceivable by Ben Elton
• Mr Commitment by Mike Gayle
• The Silver River by Ben Richards
• The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
• Whatever Love Means by David Baddiel

1998

Non-Fiction

• Creating Killer Web Sites, Second Edition by David S. Siegel
• Life On The Screen: Identity In the Age of the Internet by Sherry Turkle

Fiction

• Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland

1996

Fiction

• 1984 by George Orwell
• Generation X by Douglas Coupland
• Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh