What I’m Reading Right Now (5)
Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill - 60% - I’m definitely aware that Napoleon Hill was a prolific con artist. It’s hilarious to read about his conversations with Andrew Carnegie, which turned out to all be bullshit. Nevertheless, I still think it’s fun to read the seemingly seminal self-help grift-style book. There are certainly ideas in this book that can be beneficial, but by 2025, its concepts have been regurgitated hundreds of times and retold from various perspectives. This book is always recommended, so if anything, it might give me with something to talk about one day with someone who has also read it.
Invisible Hook by Peter Leeson - 40% - Looks at the economics of pirates and how they were able to create a functioning society. This book is so good. We’ve always loved pirate and glorified them in the movies and stories, but they’re definitely not portrayed as being as democratic as they were. I’d suggest this book to anyone and everyone.
Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Begley - 50% - Looks at the science behind neuroplasticity. There’s a lot of mention of the Dalai Lama and Buddhism in this book, but it’s not a religious book. It just describes scientific studies that were being presented to the Dalai Lama by neuroscientists. Heard about this book in a random tweet by Yohei shortly after he released BabyAGI.
Diabolical Sword: An Urban Fantasy Mystery by Melissa Erin Jackson - 10% - My sister’s first book of her 4 part series. I’m sorry Melissa, I’m a bit behind on reading these. I promise I’ll finish it ASAP.
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann - 50% - I originally heard of this book on a Tim Ferriss podcast episode with Matt Mullenweg, I think? The same episode where I realized I wasn’t alone in my madness of listening to the same song for hours on end while I build things. It’s an easy read, which is the intention, I’m pretty sure. Beauty lies in simplicity.
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday - Daily Stoic philosophical insights.
My Upcoming Reads (2)
Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications By Grady Booch et. al. - Saw Grady Booch on a podcast recently and was really impressed with his knowledge and breadth. I’ve definitely used UML before, but I’d sadly never heard of him before that. I got this book used on Amazon for ~$30. I’m excited to read more of it.
Deep Learning By Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville - Heavy on the mathematics behind deep learning, which I believe is extremely important to stay on the cutting edge of the future. I hope to find the time to dedicate the required amount of effort to this book this year.
Completed Book Reviews (6)
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps - January 2025 - 4.5/5 - This book was released in 2018, and many of its insights remain relevant in today’s company structures. I can imagine it was quite revolutionary when it first came out. It’s encouraging to see how much of the book’s findings have stayed pertinent. The gist of it is that lean teams, who can take ownership of their work, are adequately appreciated, have managers who respect and value them, and deeply care about their customers, become top performers. From a technological standpoint, concepts like clean code, loose coupling, and CI/CD fit perfectly into that structure as well. Even though it’s not entirely new data (as of 2025), I still believe that books like this help instill the ‘why’ behind what we do every day. There’s a lot of value in that, e.g. Chesterton’s Fence
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - January 2025 - 4/5 - Very easy read; it took me a few hours and was pretty fun. It has a strong religious overtone, which doesn’t bother me much, but it may turn others off. The moral seems to be: appreciate both the journey and the destination, as they are equally important.
Domain-Driven Design by Eric Evans - January 2025 - 5/5 - This book was very difficult to get through, but I definitely understand why so many people talk about it. It has some decent examples, but I don’t think you can get the full scope of what the book explains without consistently using its patterns and strategies in real projects. I had to take a lot of notes and make many Anki cards for it. Many modern technology paradigms seem to lean on DDD as the correct way to structure software and systems. Both the microservice patterns book I read last year and Accelerate have talked about its usefulness, not only in distributed system design but also in overall developer health within organizations. I’d recommend any software engineer read this book and really try to absorb the “why” behind each pattern and how they compound on each other. I think DDD fits particularly well with Golang, especially with its package structure. I’ll come back to this book and use it as a reference for many years to come.
Docs for Developers: An Engineer’s Field Guide to Technical Writing by Jared Bhatti et al - February 2025 - 3.5/5 - This book offers a helpful system for developers to write documentation. With the advent of LLMs, books like this can serve as a treasure trove of templates and systematic thinking that can improve prompting and efficiency. I have started creating Claude/OpenAI projects using material from this book to improve my workflow. While it’s not a groundbreaking book, sometimes a reminder that structured, iterative approaches lead to better results is all you need.
Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services by Jon Yablonski - March 2025 - 4/5 - An interesting take on understanding user experience. Each chapter explores a different law of design and how it can be applied to create better designs. It’s one of those books where, after reading it, I started noticing these principles everywhere—Jakob’s Law in particular. I love when that happens. The feedback loop and the compounding of knowledge are pretty addicting. I think books like this are incredibly useful. Even if you don’t actively implement every law, the ideas and concepts linger in the back of your mind, and can guiding your thought process. The book also introduces a few systems to help apply these laws in practice. A great resource, especially when used alongside AI.
Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug - March 2025 - 4/5 - I saw this book mentioned in a Reddit post for designers. Even though I don’t consider myself a designer, I find it interesting to see how they approach creating apps and websites. This book focuses primarily on usability testing. I didn’t research it much before purchasing, but the reviews were on par. It highlights why usability testing is essential and why many designers and programmers struggle with it. When you’re deeply familiar with a project, it’s easy to forget that users don’t share your expertise. Making assumptions without testing can lead to a variety of UX issues. While the book mainly discusses how to conduct usability tests and why they’re valuable, it still offers many insights. I’m now starting to read Rocket Surgery Made Easy, which focuses on conducting usability tests yourself.
Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten - March 2025 - 4.5/5 - This is a fun read. I’m pretty sure Ina wrote her own memoir, and her story telling skills are great. The book is well-paced (a bit time-jumpy but not too distracting) and kept me engaged the whole time. She’s had a pretty incredible life and seemingly took a risk at every turn. I haven’t read many memoirs, but I think it’s a genre that I’m going to continue pursuing. There are a ton of nuggets in here that will now live somewhere in my mind. It’s definitely worth the read, especially if you are already a fan of Barefoot Contessa.