For the past few years I read very few, if any, fiction at all. Techie books, check, biographies and other real-life-documentary-like books, sure, but for some reason I couldn't stick to fiction storylines anymore.

Then a couple months ago I rehashed an old pet peeve of mine to a friend, about how most science-fiction books try so hard to focus on an idea that they don't care about making interesting, believable characters and sometimes don't ever bother that much with plot either. It's all about "the idea" and it makes for a dull read, that has been keeping me mostly away from SF literature.

In response I was lent "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, and wow, what that interesting and moving and with absolutely non-bland characters! I really enjoyed it, and finished it in a few days once I actually took the time to sit down and start it. It was a very good read. The summary on the back cover kinda gives away a lot, but it doesn't take at all from the story, because the point is following the main character's evolution and changes and personality and struggles. I hear there's a movie too, I'd like to watch it at some point.

Then a couple of weeks back, I was walking in Waterstones and saw a book with this awesome cover (and a title that can only attract a software developer, "The Turing Test"!) Who cares about not judging a book by its cover, it inspired me. It's actually a collection of short stories by Chris Beckett, who I hadn't heard of before (the introduction by Alistair Reynolds is interesting in a meta sort of way), and the stories are just fantastic. They use SF as a way of exploring inherently human concepts like identity, life, art, soul, with characters that are profoundly humans (except when they're not... or are they, really?) and endearing. The stories suck you right in. Many of the worlds keep vividly haunting my mind long after I moved on to the next story. Some of the stories overlap, either set in the same world at different times or having you meet similar characters or concepts again. It's awesome. I loved it. I'd say I loved them all but I actually had a bit of trouble understanding the first story which gives its name to the book... Do not let this stop you!! Keep reading!

After this, the next time I saw another book by the same author, Holy Machine, I acquired it and happily realised it was set in the same world than one of the stories I really-really enjoyed in the Turing Test, likely set a bit later in the world's history. It was a delightful read and I finished it in a couple of days. Recommended too! I'll definitely keep looking out for the author's other books. :)

Thanks for hooking me again on reading fiction, Barry!

As part of my quest of becoming better at public speaking, I recently finished reading Presentation Zen. The first striking thing about the book is how beautifully designed it is all along (probably another one that wouldn't work well on an e-reader), which of course highlights the principles the book aims to impart.

The structure flows well, and every chapter contains lots of tips and clear steps to look at when preparing a presentation. Often a chapter will offer some background on why something work, or why you should try to get away from the traditional (and boring) way of doing presentations. Also why it might be difficult to do so, depending on the culture you live in.

The book is nowhere only about slides, but in the chapters about designing and preparing them I really enjoyed that there were so many examples, including "before" (traditional) and "after" (following the presentation zen principles). Mostly what the book really describes is a general attitude one should develop with regard to presenting, preparing for a presentation and respecting your audience.

It's an absolutely fantastic read if you want to get better at presenting and generally get away from being boring and hampered by bullet points, but you don't know where to start.

I'm trying these new principles now for my Sugar talk. I think it definitely improved my preparation, by helping me think more about flow and using slides to support what I say rather than as a crutch. When it comes to being able to deliver the talk though, it'll be another story. We'll see!

If you're studying for the SCJP exam, this is the book.

The structure of the book is beautiful, although the chapters vary wildly in length. Every paragraph has bold, visible headings for easy navigation, there are side-bars of all sorts everywhere, the most useful being the "exam watch" which highlight some tricky parts of the exam. At the end of every chapter, there is a tremendously useful self-test section, broad enough to encompass most of the important concepts and exam tricks for that particular chapter.

The self-tests are fantastic to strengthen your knowledge, make the concepts and ideas stick and, very importantly, learn to watch out for the exam tricks and traps: missing semi-colons, missing exception handling (I find that one so nasty. From the mock exams, it seems most common in complex threading questions), instance variable read from static main(), discrete ++ increment of a final variable deep inside a loop...

Additionally, the book caters as much as possible to different styles of learning (and reading!), by repeating and summarising the same information in diagrams, exercises, tables, and full recaps with bullet points at the end of every chapter. It all gets very handy as the exam gets closer and you don't have time to dive in deeply anymore.

I liked the sparse "on the job" sidebars to highlight some of the differences between real life and the exam. The humour in the book doesn't distract and can make the reading flow more pleasantly, though if you're not interested in a topic nothing will help (file I/O in Java kills me... Perl, Perl, Perl!)

Form-wise, the book is big and thus cumbersome, but surprisingly light so not too painful to carry around. PDFs of every chapter are provided on the accompanying CD, though I wasn't impressed when trying them on a friend's Sony e-reader.

Note for Linux users: the quiz/mock exam software on the CD runs fine under Wine (the only one out of 3 SCJP training software products I tried! None of them written in Java, funnily enough.)

I discovered this book thanks to Valerie Aurora, looking up her website after hearing her speak at SkyCon '07. It's taken me a while to get around to reading it but it was very worthwhile. I would recommend reading Val's review of it, which I linked above and will link again because it's a really good review. I don't know if the book has "changed" my life just yet, but it's certainly been making me think a hell of a lot, it's made me more observant of the subtle -- or non-subtle I had totally missed until now because they seem so "normal" -- ways in which girls and boys are treated and the expectations that are put upon them from early on, and how people (of both genders) react to things differently depending on the gender of the person who said or did it.

I really enjoyed all the studies described all along the book, as well as the insights the book provides in understanding where a lot of social expectations and pressures come from and how they shape and affect how people, including myself, behave or react to others' actions. Knowing this is helpful to understand people's behaviour better and hopefully would encourage the readers, no matter their gender, to negotiate better for themselves. I look forward to having a look at "Ask for it", the follow-up book which focuses on giving actual strategies to improve negotiation skills.

I discovered Three cups of tea when an article in OLPC news used it as a comparison against OLPC's goals and the lessons OLPC could/should have learnt from Greg Mortenson's work. This is the story of a man who is building schools in Pakistan. I'm nearly tempted to stop here because, if that doesn't intrigue you then probably the book wouldn't interest you either. I was sold at the "building schools" bit, and the fact that this occurs in Central Asia, mostly Pakistan and Afghanistan makes the story even more extraordinary and interesting. Along the way you'll learn bits and tidbits about Tanzania, climbing, famous climbers, Islam, Pakistan's cultures and geography, madrassas... The story begins in 1993, which makes as well for an interesting perspective on September 11th 2001 and the months that followed, given that Mortenson actually was around that part of the world at the time.

The book is very inspiring, the story and challenges incredible and the writing pleasant and well-paced... Heartily recommended read.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants to take control of their career, cares about their career, or is unhappy about where they currently are. Change and remarkable careers, like anything else, don't just happen to you, you have to work hard (and have fun!) to make them happen.This book gives you ways to achieve that, while having fun and staying true to yourself.

I really enjoyed reading it, it helped me structure and articulate my thoughts better around some ideas I hold on career development. I found it to be very encouraging, in nudging or kicking the reader's ass to be more active in building one's career consciously (honing a sense of business, mentoring, automating, personal brand...) and watching out for the traps along the way (over-specialisation, obsolescence, office politics and perception...). The format is really good as well: a multitude of very short chapters, usually 2 to 4 pages long thus perfect for a quick, self-contained read whenever you have a few minutes, with plenty of time afterward to mull over the ideas brought up.

Every chapter ends with an "Act on it" section which gives you tips, food for thought and calls to action related to the chapter contents. I always have a problem with (good) books that contain this kind of list, because if I wait to actually have/make the time to do what they ask me to do, I never finish reading them. I usually deal with this by reading the book from start to finish once, then (hopefully) giving it another read slower, later on, taking the time to follow through the action items. This was my first read. I still got quite a lot out of it: a few book references, new cool ideas to explore and a sense of confidence and reinforcement when this confirmed or fleshed out some of my beliefs and the path I have set onto. 

The book is divided into 5 sections: Choosing your market, investing in your product (that's you, by the way ;)), executing, marketing and maintaining your edge. There are a few essays by other people inserted here and there that offer refreshing point of views, real-life examples or case studies.

The book can be bought from the publisher in addition to any good bookstore. I really enjoy the Pragmatic Bookshelf books and they sometime have cool promotional offers, so I tend to get the books from them directly and recommend it to people. :) There are a few chapter extracts as well.

Ship It! is a very pleasant read, presenting a lot of simple but powerful ideas on how to make the software development process run more smoothly. With no unnecessary complexity in both the writing style and the concepts being described, it becomes easy to see how and why the ideas fit together, how they would help improve the quality of the product and of the overall process, and because every tool or technique remain "simple" many actually feel implementable (because they are!). The book includes strategies on how to bring about a change depending on your position (dev, tech lead, management, customer...), and with everything neatly cut into small parts, none is overwhelming and you can plot how best to bring them to your shop.

Although it doesn't match exactly the chapter structure I'd say there are 3 main parts to this book: tools, project management, and a list of common problems with their solutions. Feel free to skim to that last part when getting the book if you feel the need for a little bit of hope but I would advise reading the book in order, because many of the suggested solutions won't make a lot of sense otherwise.

Overall excellent, the writing style makes this book a pleasure to read and doesn't distract from the content. I came away with a ton of ideas on how to improve things and remove some of the difficulties of the software development process that really don't belong, and I hope to be able to demonstrate some of them to my team soon.

I'm interested into learning more about interface design at the moment (still collecting book recommendations!). This book was close-by so I started with it and it works very well as an introduction to the basic concepts (metaphors, affordances, etc) as well as giving real advice on how to design the workflow of an application, what to keep in mind while doing so and some more detailed tips along the way on topics such as colours or the best font to use in forms. As usual Joel's style is pleasant to read, which makes this a very quick read. I definitely recommend this book as an introduction or refresher crash-course on interface design, while keeping in mind that in the end this is still only a high-level view of the whole process. You'll want to read more to answer more detailed questions and concerns about UI and HCI.