Books I have read

Ever since I remember myself, a good portion of my time is spent reading. Lately, I started reading books from a professional interest. Just in order to keep track, and maybe to motivate me to read more, I think I'll keep a list of those books. It starts short, and I suspect I won't add more than a book or two a year, but one has to start somewhere.

1. Common System and Software Testing Pitfalls - Donald G. Firesmith.
   This book is a long list of potential problems for testing projects. I don't really see the value of such a list, and I find such books really hard to go through. If you are a person who likes lists - this book might be for you. For me, I found that I was having difficulties with the format and some of the assumptions. 
2. Pragmatic Software Testing: Becoming an Effective and Efficient Test Professional - Rex Black.
   It might be because I read this book in Hebrew, but I actually left this book in mid-reading. If you've done the ISTQB Foundation level course, this will have very little to teach you. It does enable the reader some exercises to get the concepts the book shows to stick.
3. Threat Modeling: Designing for Security - Adam Shostack.
   That's an awesome book. Everyone should read it. I wrote a review of it in my blog, but the short version is - great introduction to the concept of threat modeling, useful and easy to read. 
4. The Mobile Analytics Playbook: A practical guide to better testing - Julian Harty & Antoine Aymer.
   A cute small book that does a good job in describing the complexity of testing in the mobile sphere, and points on some interesting ideas that are used to gain knowledge by leveraging mobile analytics - from the play-store reviews to actual user's data.
   Since I don't have experience with mobile, I felt a bit detached, but it seems like a nice book nonetheless. 
5. The Little Black Book of Test Design - Rikard Edgern.
   This Small PDF describes a great approach to testing in general alongside with a quite large collection of heuristics for various tasks in the testing domain. Something there just makes sense. 
6. Mindset, The New Psychology of Success - Carol Dweck: I wrote about it here. Short summary - this book is too long, with an important idea.
7. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - Susan Cain: I wrote my impressions here. In short, I think it is an important book.
8. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy - Cathy O'neil: My thoughts can be seen here. An interesting book about how math is abused and used for abusing people.
9. Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes are High - Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler - I should check this one again sometime, as the problem it addresses is real. In the meanwhile, I wrote a bit about it here
10. Data and Goliath - Bruce Schneier. In short, you are being tracked and followed, and don't have the tools to get a decent deal for it. I wrote a bit more here.
11. Social Engineering: The art of human hacking - Christopher Hadnagy. This is a scary book that tells you how much damage can be done with very little. More: here
12. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff. This books lays a the foundation for a discourse about the ways we are being exploited by an ever increasing invasion to our privacy. In essence, it reminds us two things: Rendering our data is not about knowing our secrets, it's about being able to manipulate us for someone else's benefit, and it doesn't have to be this way. More, here.
13. Deep Work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world - Carl Newport. Or, as people might call it - the workaholic guide. It's a nice narrative, but I'm not completely bought into this idea. Still, worth your time and consideration. here
14. Radical Candor: Be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity - Kim Scott. It's a must read book for managers, and a good one for other people as well. Why? I wrote why here
15.  Modern Software Engineering: doing what works to build better software faster - David Farley. An interesting twist on our definition of software engineering (especially with the distinction between design and manufacture engineering), and a good explanation about why some of the common approaches to write software today works. Read my review here. 
16. Wring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective greatness through Slowification, Simplification and Amplification - Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear.
    A "theory of everything" kind of book, and a great explanation on why DevOps works, and what are the fundamental concepts that are transferable between just about any field. A somewhat better review can be found here
    

Some other books, not what I would call professional materia, but I think are kind of related:

1. The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford.
   This book stands somewhere between a novel and a sales-pitch for Agile methodology. The plot goes like this: A huge project is having tons of issues, and everyone suffers. A Side project is being done in some Agile-ish way, and is a tremendous success.
   Despite that strong preaching tone (I didn't feel a book preaching this bluntly since I read Ayn Rand's "The fountainhead"), the book is enjoyable and fun to read. 
2. The Act of Reading - Wolfgang Iser
   This is actually a book about literary theory (my other hobby). The reason it is here is that I think that the way Iser defines the process of reading a book as "filling gaps" is a very good description of how human beings are understanding everything, including a software they use (or test).