My BookStack

Nathan Smith has inspired to me to share my current book stack. I find that I like to read several books at a time. While I have my head in several books, there are many books that I keep just a few feet away while I work. Programming Ruby and The Ruby Way are two books that are always close by if I need some Ruby assistance.

As with Nathan, I constantly crave new books related to technology. There is so much to be consumed, and there are so many excellent publishers constantly putting out new books. What started off as a challenge from a previous boss at Barbour Publishing has lead to an obsession with immersing myself into tech books. While there are many excellent online resources available, I love having these resources next to me while I do any development.

[Photo: My current book stack]

This picture is not my entire bookshelf, but a quick snapshot of the books that are on my desk or night stand. They are:

You can also view some of the other books I have read via my Flickr photos.

So, what does your BookStack look like?

11 Comments Add your comment

  1. Brad C November 12th, 2007

    I hate to admit it, but right now there is nothing on my stack. What's remarkable about yours is the diversity. Ruby, Design Interface, typography. That's quite an impressive range.

  2. Nate Klaiber November 12th, 2007

    @Brad
    Each of these things really intrigue me. It isn't that I necessarily use every one of these things on a day to day basis, but I love to have the knowledge, understanding, and history of each. Without sounding overly cheesy, my trade is my passion. I love the challenge, I love the problem solving, I love the psychology and thought process related to each.

  3. Geof Harries November 13th, 2007

    How did you find "Web Design and Marketing Solutions for Business Websites" to be? I've been wanting to order the book for months now, but Amazon.ca shows that my delivery date will be after Christmas. Huh?

  4. Nick Dunn November 13th, 2007

    I love to have the knowledge, understanding, and history of each

    Amen to that. Half of the geek books I read are about design, typography and user experience; but my trade I'm a developer. But I have an interest in how all of the components come together. I think it makes you a better developer to understand the other disciplines.

    I just posted mine too!

  5. Nate Klaiber November 13th, 2007

    @Geoff Harries
    So far I really enjoy it. I am about 1/3 of the way through it, so I don't have a big picture of it all. I have been looking for a book like this for a while - one that takes a professional grasp on web development and merges it with quality marketing. Most other books I have considered are weighed one way or another - really good marketing and poor web solutions, or really good web solutions with some poor (or bad practice) solutions for marketing.

    So, I'll be sure to update you when I have it finished and can give a full review.

    @Nick
    I know it's rare to find a person who knows each and every aspect, and I don't want to come off as a know-it-all type person. I just have a passion to know more about each of these. I know my skillsets and when it would be better to hand off different tasks to people who far surpass me in their knowledge - but that doesn't mean I will stop learning.

    I think that is why I love my current position so much. I work with a designer who is incredible at what he does. We can discuss things, but ultimately he has more knowledge than I do. I work with a programmer who I would also consider my mentor. He has been teaching me new things since I started working with him years ago.

    So, books, coupled with excellent colleagues, inspire me to keep reading and learning.

    And, your book stack looks very nice. Several that I haven't read yet but look interesting (now tucked into the Amazon wishlist).

  6. Justin Jolley November 13th, 2007

    Here are a few of the titles from my bookstack.

    CSS: The Definitive Guide -by Eric Meyer

    JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook -By Danny Goodman

    HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS (Build Your Own) -by Dan Shafer

    The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks, 2nd Edition -By Rachel Andrew

    Learning Perl, Fourth Edition -By brian d foy, Tom Phoenix, Randal L. Schwartz

    Perl Cookbook, Second Edition -By Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington

    Unix in a Nutshell, Fourth Edition -By Arnold Robbins

    Don't Make Me Think -Steve Krug

    Beginning Visual C#, Revised edition of Beginning C# for .NET v1.0
    -by Karli Watson, David Espinosa, Zach Greenvoss, Jacob Hammer Pedersen, Christian Nagel, Jon D. Reid, Matthew Reynolds, Morgan Skinner, Eric White

    The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering -Fred Brooks

    Casual Day Has Gone Too Far -Scott Adams

    I do have a question for Nate. I've been hearing a lot about Ruby and having written a lot of Perl and PHP I'm wondering what it is that you like about Ruby?

    Is Ruby's big draw the MVC design model/Framework?

    Thanks,

    Justin

  7. Nate Klaiber November 14th, 2007

    @Justin Jolley
    Personally, I love the syntax of Ruby. It is very elegant, fun to write, easy to read. I can get more done in less lines of code (in comparison to my previous PHP ventures) due to it being OO. OO is in PHP, but not quite as robust as what you get with Ruby. The ability to extend, override, or mixin functionality is a huge plus with Ruby.

    So, that elegance, tied into a framework (Ruby on Rails), makes development a joy. I would say that Ruby on Rails definitely helped the exposure of Ruby.

    Please don't mistake me in that I don't dislike the other languages, I just prefer Ruby.

    Thanks for sharing your list of books! I recently finished reading CSS: The Definitive Guide and was in awe at how extensive Eric Meyer was in explaining each and every little detail.

  8. Brendan Cullen November 15th, 2007

    A few of us were talking about this at a past meetup, I was the only one in the conversation that was reading multiple books. Glad to see I'm not the only one.

    No fiction huh? At the very least I always have 1 fiction and 1 nonfiction book going at the same time.

  9. Nate Klaiber November 15th, 2007

    @Brendan Cullen
    I haven't read fiction in quite some time. I am not sure why, either. I just really like reading the tech books. I have no problem getting my feet wet in more than one book at a time and still keeping track of what each book is about.

    That is, unless, you see me writing a review about HTML and nonsensecially (is that a word?) interjecting some Ruby and JavaScript.

  10. Jonathan Christopher November 17th, 2007

    Some good titles in that stack, a few I'm going to take a more detailed look at. I'm glad to see you've picked up Mobile Web Design! You mentioned you were on the fence about it being electronic only, I picked up the print version too. Great book.

  11. Jon Rognerud April 14th, 2008

    The creator of the WWW (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee) belives that .MOBI extensions are not needed for the Internet, and that all apps should run on any device, no need to make such a distinction. Any development platform is used based on a persons' preference, and I'm learning the Ruby stack, very cool stuff, thanks for sharing.

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Entry Details

This entry was added on November 12th, 2007. 11 comments so far. It was tagged with bookstack, books, bookreviews, and reviews. It was filed under Personal. Prior to this entry I wrote about One Month App is launched. After writing this, I wrote about The Rails Way (Book Review).

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