Since 2018 I’ve been reading far more than I used to. Partly that’s because my kids have grown older and don’t need quite as much of my time (though they still seem to need quite a lot of money). But it’s also thanks to Audible. I’ve been listening to audiobooks while I walk the dog, potter about the house, and commute — effectively turning previously “wasted” time into surprisingly rich reading hours. ...
As 2024 draws to a close, I’ve taken some time to reflect on the books that made the greatest impact on me this year. From deep dives into technology and politics to introspective reads on life and risk, these are the titles that enriched my year – and might just enrich yours too. If you pressed me on the subject, I would say that my very favourite book of 2024 was Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher. ...
Politics on the Edge: A Memoir from Within by Rory Stewart My very favourite book of 2023 was this autobiography by former Minister and one-time candidate for Conservative Party leader Rory Stewart. I almost didn’t read it at all, as I was feeling a little jaded with politics at the time and considering a more light-hearted Audible purchase. I’m glad I plumped for this though, and it did offer some light relief in the form of Stewart’s dodgy accents when recounting conversations with fellow politicians of all parties and nationalities. ...
The Top 5 Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari My favourite book of the year partially covers the same ground as previous favourites A World Without Email, Four Thousand Weeks, and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. But the scope of Hari’s work is much broader than these. Rather than merely telling us to stop doomscrolling Twitter and get on with life, he covers a multiplicity of factors and forces that are combining to steal the ability of many of us to focus. Social media, pollution, lack of sleep, poor diet, overwork and more are all discussed, with many pointers to third-party research. ...
The Top 5 And Away… 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 many places, elsewhere this is tinged with melancholy and the realisation that, for all his on-screen tomfoolery, Mortimer is an incredibly shy individual. Touching, contemplative, warm and kind throughout, there is plenty of food for thought here regarding how we ought to live our lives and interact with those around us. I heartily recommend the audiobook, narrated by the great man himself. ...
So that, then, was 2020. Good riddance. One might imagine that the enforced downtime offered by the pandemic lockdowns would have afforded me the opportunity to read many more books than I did in 2019. But a displeasing proportion of my evenings in 2020 were spent relentlessly doomscrolling Twitter, eager for the latest morsels of information about the pandemic, US election or (sigh) Brexit. Besides, most of my “reading” in 2019 was actually achieved by listening to Audible while commuting or at the gym, two activities which barely featured in my life this year. ...
Near the end of 2018, I stumbled upon a thread of tweets by First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon in which she shared some of the many books that she had enjoyed during that year. I was both amazed and ashamed that a leader of a nation could consume so much literature whilst I, a mere sellsword codemonkey, barely got through a book every month (or two). It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy reading – I have always loved reading (and buying) books – it was just that I had somehow convinced myself that I didn’t have the time to read. I realised that this simply wasn’t true, that I could easily make time to read if I so desired, and vowed to consume more books during 2019. ...
Sometimes, when you join a new team as a .NET developer, the team lead proudly points you in the direction of a Word document or wiki page detailing the team’s house coding standards. In my experience, these documents are invariably: Incomplete. Subjective. Not enforced. Largely copied from the interweb. Obsessed with the trivial (e.g. whitespace) while failing to mention the genuinely useful (e.g. boxing/unboxing, avoiding use of deprecated classes, Dispose pattern, etc). I know this because I’ve been involved in creating such documents in the past 🙂 ...
During 2007, I unexpectedly achieved a long-held ambition by increasing the number of books I regularly read (as opposed to merely buying, then leaving them to languish on the bookcase!). I read plenty of techie books of course, but also made use of local libraries and devoured plenty of books on other subjects, and even found time for some fiction. I think having a young baby in the house was partially responsible for this achievement – not much else to do of an evening any more! ...
Many moons (and about four jobs) ago, a wise DBA by the name of David Hanson once recommended to me a book called Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Unleashed. I took his advice, bought a copy, and it rapidly became one of the most dog-eared and oft-thumbed computing books I have ever owned. It is comprehensive, deep, broad, well-written and covers everything one might ever wish to know about SQL Server 2000. With its help and guidance I came to love and respect Microsoft’s premier database product, passing the 70-229 exam by a comfortable margin. ...
When I mentioned Edward R. Tufte’s excellent The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in a recent blog post, it prompted me to search North Yorkshire’s online library catalogue to see if they had any more of the great man’s works. I was delighted to find that both Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations were available, yet languishing in a storage room somewhere rather than being on the shelves of one of the county’s libraries! So, I placed a request and they turned up at my local branch a few days later. ...
Fifty-three years since Darrell Huff published the seminal How to Lie with Statistics, and still we have newspapers as august as The Times pulling the oldest trick in the book: At first glance it all looks very impressive, but closer inspection of the comparison with sales of the Torygraph reveal a mere 8.7% sales lead, not more than double as suggested by the graphic.Not fooled. Another favourite book of mine that covers the still-relevant topic of graphical integrity is Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It’s one of those timeless works that I look forward to sharing with the next generation. ...
Monday 10th April 2006 Travelling West during the daytime is a blast, especially on a sunny day.Time it right and you can experience daylight for 24 hours, which afforded me time to catch up on some reading.For Christmas Joce had given a book entitled Freakonomics – A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Eveything, and now I finally had time to read through it.I surprised myself by finishing it by the time we reached Chicago – this may be a chunky hardback book on economics, but it’s also really interesting and easy-going. ...
I succumbed to temptation and bought another book at the MSDN briefing yesterday, pausing only out of concern that the guy who mans the Computer Manuals stand at these events might think that I’m stalking him (or fancy him!). Having determined that I could hand over my Barclaycard whilst flashing my wedding ring, I brought my current reading list up to three: Developer to Designer: GUI Design for the Busy Developer – this was a wedding present from my mother-in-law and is proving to be an interesting, easy-going read so far. My competencies lie in the middle tier and database, and although I’m technically capable of making GUIs, I prefer to leave the design up to others. It’s inevitable though that most coders end up doing some design, and this book is, er, designed (sorry) to help with that process. The early section of the book concentrates on each UI element in turn, whilst the later part of the book looks at putting it all together, and has particular focus on the web – layout design patterns and interaction patterns. It’s a good read, making a nice contrast from the heavier books, and I’m pleased to learn that I’m not alone in hating Outlook’s labyrinthine Tools->Options dialog! ...
Elizabeth Keogh has been blogging her advice for software-developer apprentices, and recommends buying and reading a selection of good software development books. I think this is sound advice – personally I felt that my career and abilities starting taking off when I stopped reading tech-specific Wrox tomes that were obsolete within six months of publication and started buying timeless Addison-Wesley hardbacks. Why so many newbie coders insist on rediscovering solutions to well-known problems instead of leveraging the knowledge of our programming forebears is beyond me, but most of us have behaved in this way at some point. Give yourself a leg-up and read some decent software design books. ...