Skip to content

Reading Highlights from Q1 2021

I read a lot of books throughout the year, but rarely write anything up after finishing them. While I don’t think I have enough to say about any one book after my first read, I want to capture a sentence or two about them to look back on, and to share with others. If I mention a book here that you want to talk about send me a message.

Q1 2021 List

  • A Philosophy of Software Design — a good read that will impact how you think about writing your code. Many of these ideas have permeated out into general software culture (I think, maybe I’m in a bubble), but I would recommend this.
  • Why we make things and why it matters — an interesting read on crafts and why we should embrace them.
  • Humankind — good, but long at many points
  • Kubernetes Getting Started — as advertised
  • The Unix Administrators Handbook — I had a former manager recommend this book to me. I’ve read it through twice now and I always learn something new.
  • Fluent Python 2nd Edition — A really good book on Python exploring areas that are not always tread, and Luciano does a great job of answering “why” as he goes.
  • Django Crash Course — as advertised, a good alternative or secondary first Django tutorial.
  • A Scoop of Django — A good read. I don’t feel like the answer of why is always explained to the level I would like. It’s hit and miss, sometimes it is, sometimes there is a link to a blog that I may get around to reading one day. A good book none the less.
  • How to Invent Everything — probably my favorite book so far this year. This is a lot of fun and I look forward to reading it with my daughter one day.
  • Think Julia — I’ve heard a bit about Julia and decided to check this out. A pretty good book revisiting a lot of programming first principles in the context of learning them with Julia.
  • Math for Programmers — I really enjoyed this. I try to keep math as a regular reading topic, and I like it when math is demonstrated via programming.