Books

Here is a list of books which I’ve read and was enlightened by those -

Books read between Sept. 2007 – Till Date

Title	Author	Comments	% Read
C# in Depth	Jon Skeet	If you think you are a C# expert, read this book. You may still find some surprises. If you don’t know C# 3.0 features or C# 2.0 features (?), this is the book to go for. “The best” C# book I’ve ever read so far. Btw, the author works in Google (obviously on Java)	90
Threading in C#	Joseph Albahari	The most comprehensive small book on Threading in C#. You may not need to consult any other threading book on C# after reading this.	100
My job went to India	Chad Fowler	A great book which not only gives practical advise on how to improve your career in programming, but also offers some good perspective on India and its software story.	100
Flow: The psychology of optimal experience	Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi	Indeed, a very good book on how to achieve Flow in life. Flow can be thought of as the state of mind when you do something for the sake of it, without thinking of rewards and failures and which ultimately leads to happiness. A must read.	100
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention	Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi	This book dispels a lots of myths on creativity – for ex, the basic understanding of creativity is doing or introducing something new. But this book explains that three things are necessary for creativity – a domain (the work or study area), a field (recognized experts in the field) and the person. Read it to learn more	100
Domain Driven Design	Eric Evans	This book is heavy material, but is an authority on many OO concepts like how to write rich domain models and many other concepts which are hard to find in any other book. A must have book.	70
Programming Clojure	Stuart Halloway	If you are one of those whose favorite programming language is Java, C# or the likes, please do yourself a favor and have a look at Lisp. And after that if you become convinced that Lisp is great but then start touting the typical managerial response that the enterprises have .Net or JVM installed, then have a look at Clojure – which is a Lisp variant, is a functional and a dynamic language (like Ruby) which runs on top of JVM. Shocked?	50
Restful Web Services	Sam Ruby, Leonard Richardson	Just started reading this book a few days back, but even if you read a couple of pages / chapters, you’ll realize what SOAP web services miss. Amazing and an eye opener.	40
Extreme Programming Explained	Kent Beck	This is the first software engineering book I’ve read after completing my formal education and it’s a gem. It explains the XP methodology which is far superior to the classic waterfall model. A very good book.	100

Books read between Dec. 2005 – Aug. 2007

Title	Author	Comments	% Read
Hibernate In Action	Christian Bauer, Gavin King	An excellent book, which not only taught me domain model design, but also taught me how to design a relational schema, and obviously the O-R mapping.	80
Applying UML and Patterns – An introduction to OOAD	Craig Larman	This book is more about Object oriented analysis and design, than UML, and it does a superb job at that. If you are serious about improving your OO design skills, this book is a must read.	80
Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#	Robert Martin	To make your OO skills SOLID, this is the book.	60
Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns	Jimmy Nilsson	Its a good book, but it’s better to read the DDD book first.	80
Design Patterns in C#	Steven John Metsker	This book is the best design patterns book for those who are not very strong in C++. I am familiar with C++ but the GoF book was still not easy to comprehend, and there are some other books which try to teach you design patterns by giving crappy GUI related examples. This author has written the Java book first and then wrote the C# one, so I believe the Java book should be equally good for Java guys. Definitely the first book to learn design patterns from.	70
The High Performance Entrepreneur	Subroto Baghchi	Wow, an absolutely fantastic and amazing book containing highly practical advice. Subroto Baghchi is one of the founders of MindTree consulting, a top ex-Wiproite, and I first liked his articles in Times of India titled Times of Mind (or something similar). If you really dream of becoming an entrepreneur, this book is a must read. Here is a very good presentation containing excerpts from the book.	100