I Buy Too Many Books

13 commentsWritten on December 15th, 2009 by
Categories: Books

I've developed this bad habit of reading about a book (usually in blog posts), thinking "hmm, that should be interesting", going to Amazon, ordering it and then forgetting all about it. The whole process takes less than 2 minutes. I have recently bought the following books, all of which i still have to finish:

  • 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know: i love the 97 Things series, and i think it's important to figure out how project managers think (just as it's important for men to figure out how women think) so i had to pick this one up. I am about halfway through at the moment.
  • Debug It!: Too many developers have trouble figuring out where to look when something goes wrong. I'm proud not to be a part of that group (on most days), though i keep my eyes and ears open for any kind of debugging tips so i just had to pick this one up.
  • Growing Object-Oriented Sofware, Guided By Tests: i never knew about this book, but i happened to glance over it in a list of recommended books based on another book that i was buying at the time. Once i spotted the "Kent Beck Signature Book"-series logo i clicked the "Add to shopping cart" button. That's right, i'm that big of a Kent Beck fanboy.
  • Advanced .NET Debugging: This is the book i got suckered into buying today... why? because Tess Ferrandez recommended it. Yup, i'm that easy. Seriously though, how could it be bad?
  • Writing Secure Code: 2nd Edition: I started reading this about 2 months ago. I'm currently at page 154. It's that boring.
  • Enterprise Integration Patterns: As cool as i suspect this book to be, i still haven't made it past the first chapter. Which i started about 3 months ago. It's not that it's boring, i actually think that messaging is very cool... but for some reason i can't get myself to read this thoroughly when there are other things to do that are more relevant to what i need at work.
  • cb

    I have the same problem… sucks that we can’t learn everything.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Cb

    i’d be worried (and disappointed) if we could

  • Harry

    Now, by posting the list of books, you are going to make me buy even more books … ;=) I think I am easy too.

  • Neil

    I was going to make a comment about your previous post on Whiny Developers, but I won’t :P jk

  • Chuck

    Ah…and I was going to pick up Writing Secure Code after I realized how little I knew from a recent audit!!

  • http://www.technologies-dotnet.be Kris-I

    I have the same “problem”, it’s manning, they send me to many “save code” :)

    Do you buy printed book too ?

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Kris-I

    i always buy printed books… i don’t like PDF’s and am not interested in a Kindle or anything like that.

  • http://jclaes.blogspot.com Jef Claes

    Finally prove that the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” and “Best Value” sections on Amazon pages really do work.

    Although they are mostly spot on, I try to ignore them. I guess I must have a case of the “Spot On Relevant Ad Fobia”.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Jef

    it depends, sometimes i look at the recommended items based on the purchase, sometimes i don’t. sometimes the recommendations are good, sometimes they suck.

    when i buy music it’s different though… then i’m often tempted to check out the suggestions ;)

  • http://awkwardcoder.blogspot.com/ Awkward Coder

    I can give one book you shouldn’t buy – Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET, a kaotic book about DDD with no detailed insight on any DDD subject…

    But that is just my opinion, you could buy it to prove me wrong ;)

    Awkward Coder

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    from my recommended books page:

    “The original DDD book by Eric Evans is very high on theory, but this book is much more focused on how to apply it (duh, it says so in the title…). Again, even if you’re not into DDD this book is still very valuable as it also contains some great discussions on current popular design techniques such as Dependency Injection, Inversion of Control and Aspect Oriented Programming. Also contains a nice introduction to using NHibernate.”

    you’re correct in that there is no detailed insight into the theories of DDD, but i still think it’s a pretty valuable resource, if only to show people that you _don’t_ have to follow the data-driven path that is all too common in the .NET world.

  • http://grantpalin.com Grant Palin

    I have this problem too. It has resulted in a stack of books on a side table, with a sign saying “READ!”, with an arrow pointing at the books. I had hoped be through a couple more of them by this time of year, but sadly I spent more time banging out code. I do have a couple of books going now that may be getting finished soon, followed with reviews. Hope the stack won’t get replenished too quickly!

  • http://stefanoricciardi.net Stefano Ricciardi

    I tend to make a good use of Amazon’s wish list. I am very liberal when it comes to adding things there (usually from other blog posts and reviews) and I let it grow as needed.

    Then, about once every quarter, or when my wife also needs something from the site, I go through the wish list and only allow myself to buy 2 items from the list (unless something is very important for the project I am working on).

    It’s worked for me so far.