What a n00b!

2015 Reading List - Part 2

Continuing on with my post from earlier this year, here's my list of books for Q3 of 2015. This time I read most of the books during the first month or so and then slowed down considerably for a while (too busy with other things).

  • Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst - Picked this one up at the recommendation of my own boss. A great read, for sure. The biggest takeaway for me reading it the first time is an understanding and acceptance that I'll never truly know what it's like to work for me. And that's ok. This one was packed with advice and definitely worth the read for me.

  • The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition - This one is a classic in my field. Would definitely recommend at least a skim if you're a SysAdmin and have never read it. I plan on picking up the later released Practice of Cloud Administration at some point in the near future.

  • Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future - This book is a long form of asking seven questions to answer when considering launching a business. It changed my perspective a bit and helped me evaluate previous failures a bit more.

  • The One Minute Negotiator: Simple Steps to Reach Better Agreements - I picked this book up at the library by accident. I had read The One Minute Manager in the past and confused it with this one sitting on the shelf. I'm glad I did. It's a short read, but a great prescriptive plan for analysis of whether or not a situation is a negotiation and what a good approach may be.

  • Resilience and Reliability on AWS - I have had this one on my wish list for a while, by the title and description, I thought it would be really helpful. Was a total disappointment to me. The content wasn't terribly deep and was a bunch of source code which could've been a repository on Github.

  • Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done - Thinking about getting things done at a level that's larger than myself is something I've thought about often, but rarely a thing I've been responsible for. This book was really an interesting one to me, but is focused at the executive layers of an organization.

  • Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - While there's a good deal of creativity and art in advertising and other types of campaigns, Dan and Chip Heath argue that there's a framework to follow in order to convey a message that "sticks". Definitely one that I would recommend to anyone looking to be heard with an important message (who isn't?).

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