It's
been a while since I ordered a job lot of books through Amazon,
but I finally got around to putting an order through last week
and a couple of Amazon boxes were waiting for me when I got home
yesterday. It's often interesting to see what other people read,
so I thought I'd make a note of them here.The first one is a
collection of essays selected by Joel Spolsky entited
"The Best Software Writing I" and features articles by
amongst others Raymond Chen, Bruce Eckel, Eric Sink and Clay
Shirky. I've always been a Joel fan and have read quite a few
articles by Eric Sink and the others, so I thought this would be
a good one for when I'm away for a few evenings. Looks pretty
good.
The next one was a book that was featured in both the
Observer Review and the Observer Business Section the other
week, and is an "insiders" view on the (management) consulting
industry.
"Rip-Off! The Scandalous Inside Story of The Management
Consulting Money Machine" takes a look at some of the (alleged
- Ed.) sharp practices and scams used by the big management
consultancies and looks like quite an interesting insight into
what (perhaps) goes on on the big consulting contracts.
I've always been interesting in the deal-making that goes on
behind new technology, and some of my favourite books are ones
such as "Burn Rate" by Michael Wolff, "Start Up!" by Jerry
Kaplan and "High St@kes, No Prisoners" by Charles Ferguson that
look at how products such as FrontPage ended up becoming the
market leader. I also regularly check out the
VentureBlog website
and was therefore particularly interested to come across
"e-Boys : The True Story of the Six Tall Menu Who Backed e-Bay,
WebVan and other Billion Dollar Startups", which takes a
look at the VC industry and how it helped put together some of
the more famous dot.com companies. Being honest this one is
probably a bit of a flier and it may turn out to be not so good,
but I've always been interested in how the VC industry works (if
the same goes for you, make sure you check out the three books I
mentioned before) and it's for a tenner it seemed worth the
gamble.
The last one came as a recommendation after reading "Liar's
Poker", a book I always recommend to other people as about the
most entertaining (and realistic) story about the excesses in
Wall Street in the 80's as you could find.
"Monkey Business - Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle"
seems to be written in the same vein and taking a look at the
reviews : "As a former City solicitor, I can say that this
book reads very true to life. When you are living in the world
described in the book, you think that it's normal. It's only
once you get out that you realise it was a bizarre and
unpleasant way of wasting years of your life. (Of course, there
are lots of other bizarre and unpleasant ways of wasting time,
and most of them don't pay so well, so maybe potential recruits
shouldn't be put off too much.)" and "This book is
absolutely the funniest book I've read about the investment
banking business. The sceptical view of the authors results in
some very funny descriptions of working situations they
experienced. Next to that, the book is also very insightful. It
gives you an idea of the day-to-day activities of the people who
just started at the bottom of the ladder at a major bank.
Therefore, I would especially recommended the book to people who
consider a job in investment banking, because these stories are
certainly not part of the flashy recruitment presentations of
the banks themselves." Obviously not a programmer's book,
but if you're worked in the "real world" (as I did for several
years before working on Oracle) and especially if you've worked
in finance, it sounds like it could be worth a read.
and include the URL for the page.
