Batched Book Reviews #8
The Manager’s Path, Storyworthy, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, The Laundry Files, Domestication
Published in
3 min readJul 27, 2023
Non-fiction:
- The Manager’s Path (4/4) — This is an excellent book, not only or even primarily, for people who are not engineering managers. It helps clarify the expectations we can have from management, teaches how to be managed, builds empathy towards your manager by showing the problems they deal with, and much more. I particularly liked the formula that goes from individual contributor, through manager, manager of managers, VP, and ends up at CTO. In some places, I felt it was a bit outdated — I think a significant chunk of the community has moved away from the concept of formal team leads in favor of staff+ engineers — but this is a minor detail, and the book is still very good.
- Storyworthy (3/4) — This book is about stories — how to tell them, how they influence the audience, and how to find them in your life. But it’s also a book about communication, psychology, public speaking, and more. The text is full of stories, written by a professional storyteller, and yet, surprisingly, I didn’t find his stories particularly interesting or touching. Nevertheless, the author’s passion and expertise made it a very pleasant experience. While I don’t necessarily agree with the author about the value of storytelling in general, I still found the book to be very valuable.
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications (4+/4) — Let’s get one thing straight, it’s not a book about data, it’s a book about modern distributed systems. And it is an awesome resource for understanding, clarifying, and putting in order the problems of such systems. Until I read anything better this becomes my go-to resource and a must-read for anyone working in this area.
Fiction:
- The Atrocity Archives & The Jennifer Morgue (4-/4) — First two books of The Laundry Files, a series about a government agency dedicated to fighting demons. This by itself is not very original but it’s not all. The “magic” is really a complicated blend of math & computer science, the main character is an IT guy after field ops training, and you can hear phrases like “C++ compiler” or other geeky references. At the same time, it’s very very dark and very full of cynicism and sarcastic humor. This would give it 3+ on my scale but the cherry on top of are short chapters after the end of each book where the author dissects the book and we can learn why it looks the way it does and what the author wants to show us — this is not something I have seen anywhere else.
- Domestication (3-/4) — A really similar one to “Beware of Chicken” — a LitRPG about a man who decides to leave his old life behind and start a farm in the middle of nowhere. But it comes with a twist — the guy is absolutely overpowered, yet he can’t use his powers in full due to “doom points” — if he reaches 100 the apocalypse will start. Not the greatest book I have read but I will definitely go for another part at some point.
Stats:
- Books read this year: ~89 (+6)
- Books on the shelf: 15 (+1)
- Books on the wishlist: 164 (+1)
