The magic of reading

My career and my life are going a lot better than they were ten years ago. There are many factors contributing to this one is the books that I’ve read. I’ve started compiling a list of the most significant ones.

What was it that caused me to start reading more? One factor is that a few of my old IBM colleagues made a point of starting reading groups, where we went through some great books like Apprenticeship Patterns, The Phoenix Project and Seven [Programming] Languages in Seven Weeks. Perhaps the main factor, though, was the extra free time that I was afforded when my commute to work changed rather dramatically.

In the middle of 2015, I left IBM and joined Masabi (where I still work, at the time of writing). Masabi is based in London and back then, I still lived outside the capital. Consequently, for the first time in my life, I found myself commuting to work by train. I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure of standing in a packed commuter train heading in to London Waterloo but you need something to pass the time and take your mind off it. In my case, I discovered the Kindle app on my phone and started using my time to read.

Check out the books that made the greatest impression on me. The list will likely grow as I think of more books to add and I’ll try to write a piece about each book, explaining why it changed my life, when I find some time over the coming weeks.