This is a list of books I'm reading, or have started reading. At some stage I'll post a review of each of them, in part as a way to help me distill my thoughts, reinforce my learnings, and acknowledge/thank the authors for the efforts they've spent in writing these books to share their knowledge.

Read, and in my head

On my shelf

Waiting for release

My thoughts on reading

My schooling didn't succeed in sparking my interest in book reading, as the best literature they could muster didnt hold a candle to the literary classics I discovered after my days in formal education. On a whim I decided that I'd missed out on something intangible by not having read any of the revered classics, so I found a handful of novels that I thought fit that description.

I cherry picked some titles from the typical top 100 novels of all time lists, and thoroughly enjoyed titles like The Count of Monte Christo, The Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Around the World in 80 Days, The Great Gatsby, To Kill A Mockingbird, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Grapes of Wrath, The Good Earth, Foundation, 1984, Brave New World, Farenhheit 451, Animal Farm, Invisible Man, Slaughterhouse-Five, Don Quixote, Frankenstien, Dracula, Gullivers Travels, The Trial, The Brothers Karamazov, American Pastoral, The Big Sleep, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Of Mice and Men, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer...

Having only dipped into the classic pond, I turned my gaze to modern fictions and non-fiction for a taste of what modern authors are doing. I was captured by titles like The Omnivores Dilemma, and Michael Pollan's other works, Snow Crash, Ice Station, The Cryptonomicon, Neuromancer, Dune, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Scanner Darkly, Fight Club.

Before too long I recieved a recommendation from a former manager of mine to read The Phoenix Project. This opened up my perspective again that not all pleasure in reading is confined to fiction. Now certainly, authors of professional/industrial books aren't seeking to entertain, but having worked in software development for so many years I couldn't help but be entertained and a little frightened by the unncanny depiction of my career (and those around me) laid out in detail within The Phoenix Project. I attribute some of the successes of my career development in the application of ideas from the books I've read below.

I also fully believe that being well read in the body of knowledge that has amassed from other professionals in your field is a key to accelerating your career growth. After all, anyone can stand tall whilst they're atop the shoulders of giants.