Best Books I Read in 2009

• The Big Switch, by Nicholas Carr: How cloud computing will reshape the IT infrastructure of companies, big and small. Nick Carr compares this to the the transformation of companies in the last century from using internal power generators  to getting their power from a grid. He paints a scary picture of how cloud computing will result in greater unemployment and privacy intrusions. I don’t fully agree with all his predictions, but he raises some important concerns.
• The Drunkard’s Walk, by Leonard Mlodinow: A beautiful book on statistics – Who said math couldn’t be fun? At the same time, this is a serious book that exposes some common misconceptions about probabilities and expectations.
• The Business of Software, by Michael Cusumano: A great example of why you should read books instead of solely relying on piecemeal wisdom in articles. Cusumano gives us a wide overview of the software business and what companies need to do to survive and thrive in the long-term. Instead of only looking at the outliers (giants like Microsoft or Google), he uses case studies of small to mid-size companies to make his arguments.
• Code, by Charles Petzold: The author has written a beautiful book for beginners to computer hardware. Although I was familiar with the contents, it was still enjoyable to see how Petzold explained the concepts. If you want to start anyone on understanding computers, this is the book to hand them.
• Creative Capitalism, by Michael Kinsley, et. al.: A bunch of essays from Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and several economists about if and how capitalism can be leveraged to solve some of the greatest problems (poverty, disease, under-development) facing humankind in our age.

Honorable mentions go to Orbiting the Giant Hairball (Gordon MacKenzie), Buy-ology (Martin Lindstrom), Common Wealth (Jeffrey Sachs), and Why We Make Mistakes? (Joseph Hallinan).

My favorite author for 2009 is Scott Rosenberg, author of “Say Everything” and “Dreaming in Code“. Why don’t my favorite authors find a place in my favorite books? The answer is: why does the Best Director lose out on the Best Picture award?

Worst Books I Read in 2009

• The Inmates are Running the Asylum, by Alan Cooper: This is a seriously misguided book that makes programmers the scapegoats for every problem associated with software. Whatever good  points there are have been overshadowed by the incredible vitriol and hatred. Read my detailed take.
• Everything You Knew about CSS is Wrong, by Rachel Andrew, Kevin Yank: This is a special award for the most deceptive book title of the year. Instead of a detailed book about CSS, all it does is provide a different method for creating a grid in CSS.
• A Little History of the World, by E H Gombrich: An older book supposed to be a “classic” on world history, except for the fact that it doesn’t consider many historical events outside Europe. And the prejudice against other cultures and religions doesn’t help, either.
• The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp: A semi-autobiography disguised as a self-help book. The best I can say about this book is that you could pick up a few pointers about generating ideas after wading through the rest of the fluff.
• ENIAC, by Scott McCartney: Intrigue sells better than technology. At least, that seems to be the motto of the author who decided to highlight the politics and power games surrounding the development of the first electronic computer instead of elaborating upon the technical details and challenges.

Other disappointments included Donald Norman’s famous “The Design of Everyday Things” that turned out to be very outdated. I learnt that it is crazy to obsessively read all of Seth Godin’s past books as they seem to mostly say the same thing over and over again with different examples; it is perhaps time for him to write a full-fledged book. Same goes for Scott Adams: Dilbert just gets tiring after a while.

As for fiction, my hero, P G Wodehouse, turned out to have feet of clay. Having read several of his books last year, I can say that while Wodehouse has a few enormously hilarious books, it is clear that there was a marked decline (repetition and loose plots) towards the end of his career. The Albert Uderzo-only Asterix books are terrible as are the first two non-color Tintin books. And the less said about “Netherland”, the better.

But I don’t agree with Rands’ judgmental attitude towards those without book shelves. While I strongly advocate reading books, the universe of book readers is very small and those who read the same kind of books you read is even smaller. It is great to meet someone who has read the same books, but then you could also have good conversations with people on other shared interests (movies, food, traveling, etc.) It is also possible that book lovers have significantly different and incompatible attitudes in other areas.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about my personal book library. I don’t know if this is the norm, but these are the classes to which the books I have belong to:

1. Books I have finished reading and either plan to keep or donate.
2. Books I haven’t started reading.
3. Reference books which I can never hope to finish.

The books I plan to keep after reading are usually some kind of collection, like the Complete Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, or a classic book like “Catch 22“. Few technology books belong in either category, but I suppose one exception would be Donald Knuth’s “The Art of Computer Programming” (which I don’t own).

The unread books I own are mostly ones I found in second-hand sales or handed from friends who no longer had a need for them. Sometimes, they also include collections of stories. The big problem with owning such books is that they tend to take lower priority over books I rent from libraries because there is no time pressure to finish reading them. And so they continue to remain unread.

I suppose Category 3 is less important today because you can do most research on the Internet. I gave away my dictionary: I have no use for it when Google is a few keystrokes away. But there are other books (cooking, photography) where it may still be more convenient to use a book by an expert than hit some random web page.

There are four shelves in my house. Two of them contain the bulk of my library and organized based on subject (fiction / non-fiction / reference) and size (paperback / hardcover). The third contains books on my active reading list, usually books I have borrowed and need to return. And the fourth contains notebooks and files filled with information I have collected, which probably should be digitized at some point.

It is indeed difficult to imagine a world without books. And I am not sure how entirely Kindle-like devices can replace them. When we compare this to music CDs being replaced by the iPod, it is not an accurate comparison. Part of the allure of books is because they come in different forms and shapes (unlike music in standard CDs). A book collection set looks and feels different. And it appeals to collectors in a different way.

But this is no going away from the overall trend. Soft-copy books are cheaper and more environmental-friendly. Most books don’t merit being published on paper. Reference collections, while an art form in themselves, have such a low read-to-printed ratio that they are better off online.

1. 1984, by George Orwell (42%): Partly read and dropped
2. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (31%)
3. Ulysses, by James Joyce (25%)
4. The Bible (24%): Partly read (The Old Testament, and the 4 Gospels in the New Testament)
5. Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (16%)
6. A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking (15%): Read
7. Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie (14%)
8. In Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust (9%)
9. Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama (6%): Read
10. The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins (6%)

(About 5 of the books are available in the public domain at Gutenberg. You probably already own a copy of the Bible.)

“Nineteen Eight-Four” would seem the strangest one to be lying about, because it is a short book. Almost everyone knows the story outline. A few movies (including the overrated “Brazil”) and the 1984 Macintosh advertisement were based on the book. It is widely used in discussions about totalitarian governments. But there is a reason why people don’t read it: it is a terrible way to spend time. If you are looking for escapism, the dystopian “1984” is definitely not what you should be picking up. I found it too depressing to read shortly after the part where Winston Smith is captured. Maybe someday.

Some of the others are pretty huge books. I am reminded of an episode in “Cheers” where Sam tries to read the 1200-page “War and Peace” in five days, at the end of which someone tells him he should have just watched the movie. I haven’t seen that movie, but I tried seeing “Ulysses”. Awful, I couldn’t get past the first few minutes although I am a glutton for punishment for most art movies.

I suspect people who haven’t read “A Brief History of Time” incorrectly think that it is too technical. Stephen Hawking was told that the number of readers would decrease for every equation he put in the book, and I believe the only one he used was E = mc², which probably everyone is familiar with already. I heard “Dreams from My Father” on audio CDs narrated by Barack Obama – a much better experience that way.

What are the books that I would probably lie about reading? “Code Complete” and “The Mythical Man-Month” would have been prime candidates, if I hadn’t knocked them off a couple of years ago. I suppose today, the prize would go to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. I tried reading it, but gave up. Forgive me if I am dense, but I felt that it was outdated, unnecessarily contrarian and pseudo-psychological. I probably wouldn’t admit that in public, but oops, I just did.

Or, maybe the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” which I really should read after having already bought the first five books, which are disintegrating on my bookshelf now.