Recommended Books
There's a lot of books out there in the world. Finding one's worth your time is tricky, I've used Audible as a forcing function to ensure I'm always buying books by having a subscription and being forced to use up those annual credits.
OK, so you have to pick one?
- Calm, reflective, thinky book - Version Control
- Scale of protagonist impact - Worm
- Being more optimistic - Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
- A dark story - The Library at Mount Char
Fiction
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Worm | Unforgettable coming of age as a super heroine book. Every book you read after will be compare to this. |
| The Library at Mount Char | A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away. |
| The Dark Tower | Stephen King's greatest. |
| HPMOR | Harrowing. Beautiful. I can discuss it at length. Fan-fiction, no joke. Great. |
| The Broken Earth series | Every book won a hugo award 3 years in a row |
Speculative fiction
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Version Control | Like primer, but in a book form, and a easier to understand. |
| Stories of Your Life and Others | Eight short stories, all beautiful and complex. |
| Exhalation: Stories | Same author as ^ all just as great. |
| After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley | A clever parody of silicon valley with a great podcast. |
| HPMOR | Harrowing. Beautiful. I can discuss it at length. Fan-fiction, no joke. Great. |
Science fiction
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The Collapsing Empire: The Interdependency | My first space opera, still the best I've read. |
| Children of Time + Children of Ruin | A book I found about time travel, that wasn't about time travel. |
| The Three Body Problem | Stunning chinese sci-fi. |
| The Quantum Thief | "ubiquitous public-key encryption, people communicating by sharing memories, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as MMORPG guild members" |
Life
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined | If there was a book I could wish everyone would read so we could talk about it all day, it is this. Changed my world view. |
| Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress | The sequel to above, more expansive and touching more aspects of modern life. |
| The Stuff of Thought | I read this when learning Portuguese and found it helped cement a lot of hard language ideas. |
| Eating Animals | Interesting essay on the authors dilemma of should I raise my kid a vegetarian. |
The non-programming bits of programming
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Machines of Loving Grace. | How humans interact with technology. |
| Leadership & Self Deception. | Neatly lets you introspect your past to uncover where you've wanted others to fail. |
| Tribal Leadership | How we do leadership at Artsy. |
| How to Change Your Mind | Not exactly what it says on the box |
| Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age | It comes from a simpler age, but still is relevant. |
| Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World | An interesting take on the value in being skilled in many areas |
| Understanding Complexity | How to think of communities |
| Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software | A great overview of how OSS is made |
Design
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Design for Hackers | Simple collection of rules. |
| Design for Software: A Playbook for Developers | Simple collection of rules. |
| Thinking with Type | Reviews don't seem amazing, but I really liked the 1st edition, so YOLO. |
| Information is Beautiful | Less of a pragmatic book, but a great ideas resource for presenting complex information. |
Programming
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| The Pragmatic Programmer | Super useful for getting solid foundations. |
| Working Effectively With Legacy Code | Code with no tests = legacy. How to deal with this. |
| Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests | The story of how TDD got created, and techniques for applying testing to projects. |
TypeScript
Obviously start with the handbook, but then:
| Recommendation | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Programming TypeScript | From 0 to productive |
| Effective TypeScript | From productive to great |
| TypeScript in 50 Lessons | From JS to TS |