Here are some of the noteworthy books I own, mouse over the books to get the skinny.
(If you need to scroll up and down once there is a popup it may be easiest to use the mouse wheel.)
Gordon Ramsay close
Unfortunately Gordon Ramsay has become a caricature of himself. High standards, being driven, demanding and not suffering fools gladly is fine. Being rude, abusive and manufacturing tantrums is not.
It happens all the time obviously. Something is successful so people try and pick the element that made it successful. They then focus on that element in order to generate more success. See most hollywood sequels and every Tarantino movie since Pulp Fiction for example. (It amazes me that Tarantino thought “I’ve got wity dialogue, interesting characters and extreme violence, they love this stuff. It must be the violence!”). Even if they identify their key to success correctly they lose the balance between that and the other elements.
It is a real pity because Ramsay does, especially in his earlier British televsion, display a lot of what the western world’s popular culture is so sorely missing of late. He has high standards, values quality work above keeping everyone happy and believes in hard work and loyalty. There is a recurrent scene in his television shows in which he unloads on an under preforming and under committed staff member. “They’re paying you to be here, this is their business, their house is on the line here, don’t you care about that?”.
I’m interested in Ramsay’s biographical business books not his cookery. They are not as matter-of-fact as Branson’s. They have more of a smell of marketing and spin. But they do give an insight into the life of a driven person who has a calling and ambition that is more important to them than anything else. His books do reveal what it’s like to be too busy chasing your dreams to be held prisoner to the daily doubt and worry that imprisons so many of us ‘average’ people.
The Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham close
Somerset Maugham is my favorite fiction writer.
He wrote mostly in the very early part of the 20th century, before World War 2. Many of his stories are set in what was then the outer reaches of the aging British empire, Asia “the far east”.
His stories ring with pathos, loneliness and often tell the tale of outsiders, alienated from their past. Often it’s that they are forked, in the chess sense, unable to give up their ‘Britishness’ or their expatriate existence far from home.
Maugham tells stories simply without excessive description of people or places. He creeps up on you. Like all masters he plies his trade with a gentle effortlessness that leaves the reader defenseless, unable to pinpoint at exactly what moment they were pulled into the story, never the less unable to put the book down.
His stories might not be for everyone. They display the sensibilities of their time, the division between the British and the colonials is often central.
I haven’t actually read “Of Human Bondage”, the semi-biographical drama that is considered to be his classic work.
A master of character and story telling.
Clapton: The Autobiography close
I enjoyed this autobiography much more than I expected. It’s a fly by the seat of your pants mile-a-minute roller coaster ride through the life of a guy who has lived by his own rules. Unlike many rocker biographies it comes across as fairly honest.
Since Clapton has actually had so much happen in his life he doesn’t need to indulge in trite little tales of what crazy thing happened at this party or which celebrity said what to whom. There are historical asides in the book but just based on the facts of his life alone it comes across as one hell of an adventure.
There are two things that give me pause about this book however. Firstly is the tragic death of Alice Ormsby-Gore from a drug overdose. Merely a girl when she became entangled with Clapton it was the drugs that he introduced her to or at least facilitated into her life, that killed her well before time. While Clapton expresses regret in a human way and with more self awareness than many I just couldn’t forgive him as I read the rest of the book. The image of her father, who is mentioned, looking helplessly on as Clapton, this godly celebrity, whisks away his daughter to a world of Heroin abuse is too strong.
Secondly, although, as I said, Clapton displays his fair share of self awareness and understanding this book doesn’t make explicit what seems to me to be the two most interesting aspect of his life.
One, he is not an amazingly gifted man, he does not have the heart of a creative artist in the traditional sense. He is a massively driven perfectionist who put his chosen craft, the guitar, above all else.
And two he is a heat seeker for talent in others. Robert Johnson, BB King, John Lee Hooker, John Mayall, JJ Cale, Buddy Guy, John Mayer and on and on. Clapton’s success is largely due to his ability to ferret out talent in others and associate himself with it.
The idea that he has succeeded through raw guitar chops (a la Tommy Emmanuel. Acording to Clapton, “the greatest guitar player I’ve ever seen.”) is completely incorrect.
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid close
A flawless victory || Douglas R. Hofstadter FTW
This is the best book ever written. That’s subjective, you can’t compare diffe… nup, maybe I’m not making myself clear, this is the best book ever written.
(If you check out the reviews on Amazon you will see that many people agree)
I say this because when I first read it I lost count of the number of times I had to stop reading, put the book down, and let out a wide eyed ‘wow’ in amazement.
Experiencing this book after reading others that cover big philosophical questions is a bit like going to the video library/shop to rent a DVD only to be ushered into the back room to find the 10 greatest directors in film history having a round table discussion on the nature of film making. Something like that anyway 
What is the book about ? Well it covers a huge amount of ground and I’m not going to try and sum up the individual sections but below I will repeat a description I made in a hacker news comment
—— comment on Hacker News ——–
Well obviously I can’t communicate the full idea of “The Greatest Book Ever Written” in a comment, but I’ll try
Strange things happen when you have ‘recursion’ / ’strange loops’ / ’self reflection’ / ‘mirroring’ / ’strange entanglement’ / ‘entangled heirachies’ etc.
What are some examples ?
- “This statement is false” is true or false ?
- The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, position and momentum of a particle cannot both be known because they each influence each other.
- Turing Halting problem proof when a program is executed using itself as input.
- Human self awareness ? If I think about what I’m thinking about what am I thinking about ?
- Godel’s proof that any formal system strong enough to be useful is either incomplete or inconsistent, to use an analogy he proves this by stating in the language of the system the statement “this statement cannot be proved in this system”. If it can be proved the system lied (is inconsistent) or if it cannot be proved the statement is a truth that the system cannot prove and hence the system is incomplete. (Obviously he doesn’t use statements like that, he uses facts about the natural numbers but the same principle applies)
- Chandelier cells in the brain, thought to contain an internal model of the brain’s state. A model of the brain within the brain. Do they contain a model of themselves ?
Ok, so if this ‘recursion’ / ’strange loops’ business is mysterious and present at the heart of all interesting systems it must be pretty special, it must require magic or divine intervention to come about, surely ? Nup, simple examples such as the ‘game of life’ can show amazing complexity and even this sort of ’self awareness’ emerging from a simple initial state and a simple set of rules.
Best I’ve got at the moment.
—— end comment on Hacker News ——–
I urge people to read this book.
The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul close
The Mind’s I, as well as being a great pun, is a collection of philosophical essays about consciousness curated by Daniel Dennet and Douglas R. Hofstadter
To be honest I have never been a Daniel Dennet fan, I am somewhat with Aaron Swartz with regard to Dennet. Hofstadter it goes without saying of course is the man.
Many of the constituent essays are very good and some, such as the classic Dawkins “Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes” are great. The one that makes the book for me is “Is God a Taoist?” by Raymond Smullyan.
“Is Got a Taoist?” takes the form of a conversation between a mortal and god in which god explains that free will is not quite how it seems, how physical determinism and free will are not necessarily contradictory.
Perhaps part of the reason I love this essay is that this core idea is something that I have long believed. Physical Determinism Vs Free Will is a debate that, like discussion of the the Anthropic Principle, irritates me as I don’t so much prefer one side to the other but think the rules of the game are invalid.
This book is well worth checking out in my opinion.
Richard Branson close
Richard Branson’s on speed. Or uppers or jelly beans or something. For someone with so much chaos in his life he always seems in a state of relaxed pleasant amusement. Whatever he has, I want some.
His autobiographical books provide more entertainment value than sage business insight but they do give a feel for the sort of decisions he makes on a day to day basis.
In a personal revelation he recounts how as a young child his parents decided on the spur of the moment to pull the car over and drop him off some miles short of their house in order for him have the adventure of finding his way back home.
This story alone I think explains his personality. Some will think such a thing reckless and dangerous. That is true but there is something epic in it, something honest. If a child is to go on and start a magazine at 16, create a successful record label, an airline, a financial conglomerate, and so much more and be smiling all the while the parental voice played back in the depths of their mind probably has to be saying “Take a chance, whatever happens you’ll be ok, we aren’t worried about you”.
Also, being a British citizen (as well as Australian) I find some pride in Branson’s success. He stands out as one of the few recent British entrepreneurs that can stand on the world stage with confidence.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs close
Firstly I have to confess to only having read the first 1/3 of this book. It’s an epic computer science classic so while it’s true you gain extra damage hit points merely for owning it to get the full value you do have to read it.
While perhaps not qualified to pontificate too much about the book not having read it all I will say that it has given me “put the book down and take a breath in awe” moments. A bit like being lead down into a cave mouth by a guide, the initial chapters are reasonably unremarkable but if you pay attention you can tell you are heading deep.
The book superficially takes the form of a guide to LISP, but actually it’s raising and exploring fundamental concepts of computer science in general and programming in particular.
This book, Like GEB, is much more meaty than the average. Meaning that you have to re-read sentences and paragraphs in order to make sure you’ve understood them. The authors are taking you on such a detailed methodically structured journey that unless you follow closely you will get lost.
Of more value is Peter Norvig’s Review of the book on Amazon
The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit close
Data Warehousing may end up being another IT fad that allows the sale of “enterprise” software at over inflated prices to large organisations that think they can out source vision and management. Or not. Regardless, I think Dimensional Modeling is a very interesting approach to creating large reporting databases and Ralph Kimball is a fantastic advocate and communicator.
His books are easy to follow. It’s clear he wants you to understand, unlike many specialized ‘experts’ who need to use redundant jargon in order to retain their mystique.
I would actually recommend The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling above the book linked in the title. They both have nice introductions to dimensional modeling.
I wouldn’t say warehousing and dimensional modeling is a fundamental aspect of computer science, I don’t think it is. It is interesting for a couple of reasons though.
Like AJAX, Web Services, Cloud Computing, Software as a Service, Freemium, Social networks and so much more Data Warehousing demonstrates the importance of having a nice neat label. It’s no use having complex processes and design patterns (another one) that take hours to introduce. In order to get mind share you need a neat label that will make the whole messy leaky abstraction sound like a pretty little package with a bow on top.
Some people have the gift of being able to package up ideas, organize their interrelations and give them a label. I think Ralph Kimball his this gift.
This isn’t meant to be a backhanded compliment. It might sound like what I’m saying is that these buzzwords are shams, merely keywords to allow people to talk about them without understanding what they really mean. Well that is kind-of true, but the labels also serve a valuable purpose. These ideas wouldn’t be so widely used and exploited if people weren’t able to package them up under labels as we simply wouldn’t be able to talk about them so easily.
Database Entertainment
It would appear that Fabian Pascal is in some ways the L’enfant terrible of the database world. Personally I don’t think he is in the Erik Naggum (RIP) league, but then again who is. But if you are looking for some amusing database related reading do some research on Mr Pascal.
Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (the dragon book) close
Ok, if SICP is partly decoration, the dragon book is completely for show. I tried to learn from it when I writing a compiler in university and found it too dense and hard to follw for me, it’s out of my league.
“Crafting a compiler with C” was the book that actually got me going. Much more easy to follow for the beginner, in my beginner opinion. If I still had a copy it would be on the bookshelf.
I saw Steve Yegge in a youtube video talking to a university audience. He said that given the state of compiler writing today something created using all the tips and tricks in the dragon book would be considered a very naive compiler. I don’t have the exact quote.
Code Complete close
The first thing that’s interesting about this book is the level of programming it deals with. It’s about code issues at the single screen level and smaller.
I mean that it’s about how to format, name variables, organize a function/procedure/method, when to use a case statement, when not to use a case statement, where to do your error handling, choosing control structures, dealing with nesting, that sort of thing. This is actually pretty rare. Most programming books I come across want to talk either grand design or low level specifics of a particular language/environment.
I guess if I wanted to be a little pretentious, which I of course do, you could say that this book is about the craftmanship of programming. This is the book that the wise old foreman gives to the new carpenters apprentice on his first day at the site. See, I told you I could be pretentious.
I like the book and learned a lot reading it, I also had much of what I knew instinctively reflected back to me in ink.
Of course no book (with the possible exception of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”) can teach people to care. The quality of software development out there is pretty poor but perhaps that’s due just as much to people genuinely not caring about the code they write as it is to a lack of good practice.
The most painful part of reading this book is when I recognized bad practices that I had been guilty of myself and realising I knew they were bad at the time I did them. Whether it was being rushed or feeling rushed or something else, I know I’ve written bad code being reminded of it isn’t fun.
Definately a great book for programmers to read imho.
Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference close
Simply tech specs for html, CSS and Javsscript printed. This was my most heavily used book from 1999 to 2003.
There is something strange about how attached I am to this book given that it’s content is so unsophisticated. I think it’s just how damn useful it’s been. Hundreds of problems over the years have caused me to flip the pages looking for a relevant example or a clue to help correct my code.
It’s an oft repeated truth that computer books are on the wane. People just aren’t buying them. Well I would imagine that this sort of book would suffer most. In electronic form its more easily searchable and more up to date. And yet, I think if I was just getting into web development I would still shell out for this one.
C Programming Language close
A short straightforward introduction to C.
This is a fantastic manual, the right balance between code examples and prose. Other people have said that the advantage this book had is that the thing is is describing, the C language, is relatively simply, that if a similar book was to be written for many of todays technology stacks it would be huge.
There is some truth to this, but there is also truth to the fact that real experts can often be far more succinct, knowing which examples are important.
Funny Annecdote
Somone in usenet comp.std.c posted about a memory that was perhaps not quite accurate, Dennis Ritchie’s (the co-author of C and this book) reply is great
The Funniest Usenet post ever :
Subject: Re: Computing sizeof() during compilation
From: Dennis Ritchie
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
[Submitter's Note: look at the author...]
From: Dennis Ritchie
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Computing sizeof() during compilation
Organization: Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies
> You are right. It was nice back in the days when things like
>
> #if (sizeof(int) == 
>
> actually worked (on some compilers).
Must have been before my time.
Dennis
Feynmen close
As you probably know, Feynman was a nobel prize winning physicist most famous for having a van with a nice paint job. (They ain’t just squiggles)
His writing and television interviews are worthwhile for two reasons.
Advocacy of genuine intellectual curiosity. Not the kind of lawyerish/sociological/Doctorate of Education kind of mushy pseudo intellectual curiosity that dominates public debate, but the real “how does it work, if I press that will it fall down” kind, the good stuff. Feynman can be pardoned from charges of egoism and self-fascination because to put it simply, he is a force for good.
Anecdotes of smart people being naughty. Obviously you can’t hang out with as many true-blue geniuses as Feynman and not have great stories. Most of Feynman’s stories star himself as the incorrigible practical joker who finds ingenious ways to circumvent the rules.
There is hero-worship of Feynman in the “Geek” community as he deliberately cultivates the ‘try and stop me’ sticking-his-tongue-out-at-authority rebellious attitude that is the classic Geek revenge.
“Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman” is my favorite Feynman book. If you haven’t checked them out his youtube interviews are great.
If you have a book you would like to recommend please let me know in the comments.
Maybe someone should make a site where people can upload bookshelf pictures and then create image maps and add descriptions. Maybe such a site already exists. Maybe Amazon is a more useful home for people’s book reviews. just an idea.