Vanity reading list 2019

Here goes the list of what I’ve read during 2019.

Kindle

• Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa

  How long would you carry your father’s corpse in a broken van through a civil war.

  Everyone who loses their pride becomes a miser of a sort; their self-importance increases, their eyes die out, and their resentments accumulate.

• *The Gervais Principle: The Complete Series, with a Bonus Essay on Office Space (Ribbonfarm Roughs Book 2) by Vankatesh Rao

  Vakatesh is my hero. It does help I already love The Office. But why?

  Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing Losers into middle-management, groom under-performing Losers into Sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort Losers to fend for themselves.

• Speak German in 90 Days: A Self Study Guide to Becoming Fluent by Kevin Marx

  Nope, waste of time.

• The Comprehensive Dictionary German-English Kay Engelfeld

  Nope

Hardcover

• Terraform: Up & Running: Writing Infrastructure as Code

  This is nice. Yet, I cannot get past the feeling of ‘There must be a better way of handling all of this shit’.

• Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and Devops: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations

  This is the book everyone claims to have read, yet no-one understands. My copy is now full of questions. How to apply these topics when you are <50 people company? I will pay for that book.

• The McKinsey Way: Using the Techniques of the World’s Top Strategic Consultants to Help You and Your Business

  If I speak like one of them, maybe they will let me co-exist?

• The McKinsey Edge: Success Principles from the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm

  I have to admit, this and the other McKinsey book helped me in ways I could never imagine. I will never internalize the mechanics in these books for they either seem so simple or completely made-up. However, now, reading randomly a couple of pages from these books before business meetings allows me to get out from the engineering mind-set and switch into strategic one.

• The Aware Baby and Tears and Tantrums: What to Do When Babies and Children Cry

  Reading about babies has a nice calming effect on me, now that I am a proud and scared father of one. They are….reassuring

• The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking: Logical Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving by Minto

  “Writing is nature’s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.”

  This one really changed how I even write simple emails now. I wonder how long, if ever, it will take me to understand how/where my mind works differently.

• Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds

  It is absurd how most of this is true. I wonder what finleap management would think about the book?

• The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier

• Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change by Jared Diamond

• Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider by Peter Gay
• Make Time: How to focus on what matters every day
• The Great Divergence by Kenneth Pomeranz*
• Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision-Making by Venkatesh Rao
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
• French Children Don’t Throw Food and Touchpoints-Birth to Three and Diary Of A Baby: What Your Child Sees, Feels, And Experiences
• Nurturing Natures
• Developer Hegemony: The Future of Labor Erik Dietrich
• The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier
• A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout I love how people spend a lot of time thinking and arguing in the simplest, mundane things.
• Papa ist ein Superheld by Soosh Best Dad book ever.
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter Never managed to finish this one. A good chunk of the book is devoted how a state-machine can work and grow in theory, infinitely, which is a bit boring if you are familiar with the idea.

Audible

• The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
• Change by Design by Tim Brown
• The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
• Welcome To Your Child’s Brain
• Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Darin Greatly by Brene Brown
• Winners Take All
• Trillion Dolar Coach
• Skin in the Game
• Accelerate
• Creative Quest
• Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Hundread Years of War