MICHA.ELMUELLER

As in the last years here comes my recap on the books which I have read. The last recaps can be found here: 2015, 2014. This time there is some redundant content with the posts on South America, since I already mentioned some of the books there.

Gayle Laakmann McDowell — Cracking the Coding Interview
I have used this book as a preparation for job interviews. The book does a very good job therefore and is quite extensive. I think it is also a relevant read if you’re not preparing for job interviews, since it attends to many problems relevant in computer science and software development (problem solving, software design, algorithmic design, …). There is a video presentation by the author on youtube which has some of the books content in it. It’s well worth worth watching. The only thing I regret about the book is that I bought the hardcover instead of the ebook (the hardcover is quite heavy).

Becoming Steve Jobs
Why another Steve Jobs biography? I thought the same once I stumbled upon the book, but got quickly interested after reading the foreword. The authors basically describe, that they have the impression that Jobs is often portrayed wrong in media. As longtime friends they felt it was necessary to correct this image. They write, that the war on how history will see Jobs has begun and that they feel they need to contribute their version.

I found the book very good. There is a lot of new information which is not covered in the Walter Isaacson biography, nor in other biographies. If you are interested in the person of Steve Jobs, the book will provide an interesting new angle with a lot of stories and information that are not mentioned elsewhere.

Benjamin Stuckrad-Barre — Panikherz
This is Stuckrad-Barre’s autobiography “Panikherz”, it was an interesting read and I think I have read it at a fitting time in my life. It also urged me to read more about Udo Lindenberg, Harald Schmidt, and Stuckrad-Barre himself. The book is quite long though and I think the overall work would be better if some stuff would have just been left out. On the other hand, Stuckrad-Barre leaves out anything related to women in his life. I see how one can argue for this decision (though he never explains why), but I still feel that the book would have benefited from at least some information or explanations, since this leaves some empty spots and yields unanswered questions.

Ian M. Banks — Consider Phlebas
This is the first book from his Culture Series. Hardcore science-fiction, artificial intelligence, interstellar wars, and space ships. I got interested in reading the books after having read that Elon Musk named various SpaceX facilities after things from the books. I liked the book a lot, though I was a bit disappointed by the ending. But overall it is very well written and thrilling. It reminded me of the Ender Series, though the universe and the characters differ in a lot of ways. I am eager to read more of the Culture Series; from what I hear the first book is sometimes considered the weakest.

Christopher Fielden — How to write a Short Story
Whilst travelling I went through some creative writing material of mine that dates back some years. I was surprised by the quality of it and decided to hand it in to some competitions. Whilst researching, I stumbled upon the aforementioned book and read it. It contains a number of writing tips and insights into the short story/flash fiction scene. This has encouraged me to actually submit two stories to competitions. Besides that there were still things which I couldn’t identify with in the book. My most critical point is that the author suggests to do market research when writing stories and adapt the story material based on that. This is a different approach than I have to writing stories. For me, the trigger to write something is never a competition, it is always a personal experience or an idea that I aim to put into the best story I can write. Doing market research and adapting a story for a certain audiences contradicts my attitude. Nevertheless, the book was a worthwile read. It was quite entertaining and funny, especially since the author includes his own short stories and details the work he put into them and how he adapted them based on the feedback of competition judges.

Rusty Young — Marching Powder
I got to know about this book after skipping through an old “Rough Guide to Peru” which lay around at a place where we stayed. The book mentioned the infamous San Pedro prison tours and after some research online I found this blog post. This was more than enough to get me interested in reading the book. The book tells the autobiographical story of Thomas McFadden who got imprisoned in La Paz (in the San Pedro prison) for international drug trafficking. Read the above mentioned blog post if you are interested in more details about this very unusual and infamous prison. The book is for sure my most favorite book since quite a while. It grabbed my full attention after I had started reading the first page and I am still flashed after having read it. Very thrilling. Reading the book was an experience as I imagine reading “The Beach” whilst staying in Thailand on Koh Phangan must be. I knew all of the cities, had been to most of them by now. Though, opposed to The Beach this book is a biography and not a work of fiction. I could relate to culture specific things he wrote and was totally stunned that all of this had happened here where I was, just a brief time ago.

Eric Clapton — The Autobiography
In my opinion the book could have been a lot better, since he plays his achievements a bit down and often not even mentions them (similar to Stephen King in his autobiography). Nevertheless it is a very honest autobiography and he mentions a lot of incidents which take a lot of courage to admit. After having read the book I started listening back to some of his songs. He describes how they came to be and I could relate to a lot of his creative process and motivations. In my opinion, Wonderful Tonight, My Fathers Eyes, Layla, and Tears in Heaven are songs in a totally different league than an average hit song. This is timeless music which is going to stay. The book also made it clear to me, once more, that at some point in the future I need to look more deeply into The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and The Grateful Dead.

Bret Easton Ellis — American Psycho
Valerie got me interested in reading this infamous classic, she had it on her reading list since quite some time and read it in South America (I guess the book is even more interesting to psychologists). During that time she always mentioned stuff from the book to me. I had seen the movie some years back and liked it a lot, so this got me interested in reading the book as well. The book was a very tough read though. Some chapters are quite disgusting and very violent and it sometimes was hard for me to read on. But I guess this is the overall literal genius behind the book: creating emotions such as arousal, disgust, and empathy in the same chapter. I am looking forward to rewatch the movie and found it interesting to read up on literary analysis and interpretation after having finished the book.

Philip Ackermann — Professionell entwickeln mit JavaScript
I read the book to get up to date with the latest developments surrounding JavaScript/ECMAScript. The book did a very good job and I worked through it in a short time.

Lutz Geißler — Brot backen in Perfektion
A book with minimalistic bread recipes and an easy technique. I use these guidelines for baking bread. Just a couple days ago I noticed that there is a CRE podcast on bread by the author (in German though).

Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, and Trent Hein — Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook
I took notice of this book after discovering a nice youtube channel (this one) on linux system administration and system tools. The book is really extensive and wide scoped, I have read maybe 60% of it — I see it more as a reference book.

Isaac Asimov — Foundation (Book 1)
Wanted to read something of the Foundation series for a while now. After talking to Oskar about Asimov he lent me his copy. Hmm. I have to admit that I didn’t get really warm with the book. I think this is due to the fact that it was brought to life in the 1940s/1950s and thus is a kind of “historical science fiction”. It seems somehow weird to me to read about a distant future where people still use microfilms and have the idea to create a giant encyclopedia of human knowledge (which due to its enormous size is only available on one planet). I can’t really relate to this kind of — from a today’s perspective — surreal science fiction.

Nizami — Layla and Majnun
I took notice of this book because of Eric Clapton’s autobiography. He explains that besides his love for a certain lady, this book was a heavy inspiration behind the song Layla and the album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs”. The book is very much a dreamy fairy tale, it describes for example how two separated, distant lovers communicate via poems which are recited in the population and each of the lovers recognize it as a poem of the other lover once they hear it. It was sometimes a bit too much fairy tale for me, but it contains some nice verses. Overall though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, if it wasn’t for the context of Clapton’s works.

I see her eyes in yours, darker than night;
Yet mere likeness cannot restore her to my sight.
For what I have lost no one can return,
And all that is left are the memories that burn…

—Layla and Majnun, Chapter 22

 
To summarize: Throughout the year I read 13 books, three of them in German (because German was the original language in those cases), the rest in English. Overall my most favorite book this year was “Marching Powder”, this one really captured me.