My reading activity has slowed somewhat since April. I have finished just 6 books in the last few months. The list is below:

Building Scalable Web Sites
By Cal Henderson (2006)

Cal Henderson explains everything you ever need to know to build a scalable web application. Draw upon his experience in building the Flickr.com, the book covers a wide range of technologies such as application building, database tuning, optimization and monitoring. A notable gap is cloud based infrastructure, which isn't on the radar screen when the book is published in 2006.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Annotated Edition)
by Edwin Lefèvre, Jon D. Markman (1923)

A fictionalized account of Jesse Livermore, a stock trader of the early 20h century. Despite the decades passed, the war stories still resonates today. A lot of things haven't changed. I have learned a few things on how market making works. (His role is simply knowns stock manipulator, apparently legal and without negative connotation at the time). The frenzy speculation of railroad stocks back then is a reminiscent of Internet stocks bubble today.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
by Edwin Abbott Abbott (1884)

A creative novel where the characters are simple geometrical shapes like squares and circles. Despite the simple idea, it manage to tells a good story and allude to a social commentary. For an object in 2 dimension space to perceive the existence of 3 dimension space is a great revelation!

Web services for the real world
By Leonard Richardson, Sam Ruby (2007)

How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
by Stewart Brand (1995)

Stewart Brand's book is exceptional. Will write about it when I have a chance.

Swarm Intelligence
by Russell Eberhart, Yuhui Shi, James Kennedy (2001)

2011.09.05 [book] - comments