My Reading Numbers

Of the 29 books I read in 2021, eight of them were pure fiction. I especially enjoyed reading the first two books of the Dune series and the Bobyverse books. Five books were on the psychology of people, I especially enjoyed Them, written by Jon Ronson. Surrounded by Idiots, on the other hand, I found quite weak in its scientific integrity and with a few dangerous simplifications and assertions. Of the thirteen popular science books, I enjoyed Why Nations Fail and The Selfish Gene the most.

Finally, I began reading dedicated literature for software engineering. I can very highly recommend The Pragmatic Programmer as a fantastic starting point for someone who didn’t study software engineering specifically and wants to move their programming behavior to the next level.

I continued writing reviews to any non-fiction books, especially with the material of the Great Courses on Audible. Most of the books I read were audiobooks, with the exception of the programming focussed books and most books from Jon Ronson

Highest Regarded

The Code Breaker is one of the most gripping books I’ve read in a long time. It’s Walter Isaacson at his best, interviewing the key players around world-changing events and wrapping them into an intriguing story. It provides an insight into the tough STEM research environment and the thought process of scientific thinkers.

Top Blog Posts and Projects

To something different for a week invites you to try to program a bit differently every week. Don’t use any new packages, structure code differently, implement two versions, measure performance consistently etc. It’s a nice list of ideas that you can quickly try.

Stay in Touch a post that describes Jacob Greenfeld’s system of Contact Management. Inspired me to set up a similar pipeline to remind me to stay in contact with people I value.