This book is a perfect guide for building castles in the sky. Most of what you learn from it is that data is hard to deal with and it's better to make fantasies about a perfect world where everyone is sharing and collaborating and both your time and budget are unlimited.

This must have been just one long blogpost explainining what're the differences between datawarehouses, data lakes, delta lakehouses, data fabrics and data mesh. This is key and unfortunately, I couldn't find one single source of truth that explains their differences in detail.

This book can only be recommended if you have plenty of time and leasurely want to learn about data architectures based on a highlevel view of someone who doesn't even talk about their practical implementation.

Score 2/5

Probably, the best book on Kanban for Operations people though you'd have to skip most of it to get any value.

Although the author has lots of experience being around different OPS people and the book is fun to read, the main audience of this book is not them but the Agile coaches and all kinds of bloodsucking snakeoil salesmen.

Even though it's enjoyable & easy to read and I was utterly disappointed when it ended, the book is so verbose and full of "Agile" exercises that only a con artist can benefit from it.

Score 2/5

Needed a book to brush up my Python skills in a quick and possibly fun way

Definitely, that was the right choice to make. This book checks every checkbox

Although I found it unneccessarily verbose in some areas, it still is the best Python book I've every read.

What I didn't like about it:

  1. Too much coverage of basic libraries that AI can help you with in no time
  2. Excessive code listings, I'd prefer leaving the boilerplate aside and be able to find it on Github if needed

Score 5/5

This book didn't age very well, most of the technologies described in the book are obsolete already.

I needed to quickly learn Hadoop fundamentals:HDFS and HBase. As a classically trained engineer I went for the book from the reputable issuer with most positive reviews.

Although the chapters on Hadoop architecture, HBase, Avro and HBase were very helpful to get me started with all technologies I needed, the rest of the book is unbelievably outdated.

Multiple pages of Java code listings, guides to install lots of applications (depending on what OS you're using) by hand.

No one does that anymore due to 2 reasons:

  1. Docker helped me to install Hadoop on my Windows laptop that's running Debian</>
  2. Code suitable for the latest Hadoop build is available on Github
    3. </ol>

    Even though I truly believe that I was able to learn substantially more from the book than what I needed, I found most topics covered pretty well on a dated Udemy course. However, I spent hours on Udemy and days to finish the book.

    My score 1/5

The author is really obsessed with the "data" part of his book. This is not a book on technical details how the data is stored in various storage engines. Rather a philisophic view on how to use what's available on the market and what could have been done better.

That's a very rare breed of technical books that's really very enjoyable to read. The author has some serious hands on experience and that shows in the way how he describes things and how sceptical he sometimes is with regard to certain gimmick technologies, some of these technologies have even faded away when he worked on the second edition, hence he even dropped them from the book.

Though I enjoyed reading the book, given that the author gives it readers a very shallow look on the topic,imho this book can only be recommended to those who are new to the industry os someone looking for a fun refresher.

My score 5/5

Possibly, that's the most hardcore technical book I've ever read. In times of abstractions, when all things are distributed and it's almost impossible to find where your app is running Brendan Gregg has reinvented his own wheel. He's doing what most engineers are dreaming of doing but neither they have time nor interest from their stakeholders. He's getting to the bottom of what comprises the performance.

Screw your Dockers and Prometheuses, with the few exceptions of few self-written scripts and eBPF one-liners the author is using common tools to measure and troubleshoot the performance problems. This book doesn't go too far as trying to solve all issues with GNU utils only, but almost every tool described in the book is battle-tested and has earned its fame long before this book. Gee, it has full chapters on sar & perf.

Whoa, this book is a refresher in the world of abstractions that we live in now. Not sure, how practical this book is for anyone outside of Netflix but nevertheless it's 100% worth your time if you're interested in how things are working under the hood.

My score 4/5

As a North Carolina local I can't emphasize more how hyped we're here about the pirate history of our state. Every cove, bay and island that used to be used by the pirates has become a tourist attraction and people are flocking from around the world (myself included) to checkout the Queen's Anne Revenge burial site and where the infamous pirate Blackbeard has lost his head.

This book shouldn't be sold at a pirate-themed amusement park or in a pirate museum souvenir store. The reason is that it tells the cruel thruth about the pirates and takes out the romance that we've been fed through the books and movies. It's main message is that pirates were gangs of thugs looting, killing and torturing whoever was on their way. They weren't pretty princes riding on unicorns fighting the armies of evil, quite the opposite of that.

This is the book you want to read if you want to be real about pirates.

My score 4/5

Very practical book on how to reclaim your life from ever increasing digital distractions so you can enjoy it in your own way rather than what Silicone Valley dictates you.

Other books I've read on digital declutter usually focus on how bad social media is. This book is not an exception, however its foundation is very different. It focuses on helping you to build new habits rather than blaming others. I really liked author's ideas on spending more time alone to decompress after spending much time in front of the screen and finding good sustainable hobbies so you don't pull up your phone every time you get bored.

Another great point is that Silicone Valley is constantly fighting for your attention, trying to take you out of real life and replace it with a digital screenery. If you don't resist you'll become just another source of income for their well-oiled soulsucking machine.

My score 5/5

At first sight this book is complimentary to two great books by David Goggins, plus a bunch of lists of steps to follow. David's books bring a much more powerful message, however his stories are pretty rough. This book has a much better language and is easier to read, and it definitely has its value though its message is secondary to Goggins' books. I had fun reading it though

My score 3/5

I have mixed feelings towards this book. It's both boring and entertaining. I had to skip some parts of it explaining the technical details of certain stock market operations and at the same time I craved more details on the IEX stock exchange founding story.

I'd rather have this book in the form of a blogpost.

My score 3/5

I don't know how it's possible but I haven't heard about this book before starting to read it and it was a 100% impulsive buy. How blind I was! It turned out to be a lowkey sleeping beauty.

That's a practical book that works best for people who like to be hands on with what they read. In this aspect it reminds me of "Getting Things Done" by David Allen as similarly to the latter it's instanly motivated me to use what I learned from the book in my daily life. What's also similar to GTD is that I was immediately able to reap the benefits from reading this book.

This book is highly practical and gives you working recipes how to be productive and live to the fullest without being constantly stressed, distracted and living in fear that you're missing something.

My score 5/5

The book is more enjoyable than the first book by David. However, I find its message weaker than the first book.

The first book will make you move, but this book is mostly about David being an overachiever in every possible direction.

It's still a great book, but that's close to TedX talk rather than the dirty empowering movement that the author brought with his first book.

My score 3/5

I had to force myself to start reading this book due to the amount of explicit language used by the author. That's probably the first book I've read in more than 20 years that contains curse words. However, I don't think that the kids will be reading it. As an adult I'm fine with that.

Author's story of starting from the bottom has really touched my soul. In today's world where people are often avoiding the difficulties by all means this book is really pushing the idea of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" to the limits of what a human can do by making the reader to embrace the failures. Every failure should make you calloused so next time you fail it won't hurt you.

What's also really interesting is how the author was able to completely avoid bringing any right or left ideology to his book. Given his background as a Navy recruiter and the fact that the author ruminates on the subject of how his despises weak people I really love that the book is clear of politics.

My score 5/5

This book will suit if you're a history buff like me. Especially, if you're interested in how economics and history can correllate and influence each other. Well, maybe not so much if you live outside of US as it's solely focused on the US economy. However, as big as it is now the massiveness of the US economy became a thing only after economies of all former hegemons failed which is relatively recent.

This book starts from the good and bad things that happened during the Great Depression and doesn't cover the premises of why the 19th century was so fundamental for building the world's biggest economy.

However, if you're not interested in the historical part of the book it can be condensed to a very few principles:

  1. Former history won't give you answers to the questions of the future.
  2. Use common sense for decision-making, others make mistakes.
  3. Live beyond your means, no one cares what car do you drive.
  4. Those who have good money habits and perseverance will prevail no matter what failures they may face in the process.

My score is 5/5.

Personally, it took me more than 6 months to finish this book from the moment when I saw it at the bookshelf at Malta airport until the moment when I was done with all its additions and appendexes. That's definitely my fault, not the book's as it's very pleasant to read unless you want to practice every single concepts that it's aiming to teach you.

That's not the first book on personal productivity I've read throughout the years, but surprisingly, many approaches that this book is teaching you were fresh and new to me.

In my opinion, it's beneficial to follow the "practice what you preach" idea with this book as most concepts given in it are easy to follow and if I hadn't then I'd have forgotten all of them after turning the last page of the book. Even though I'm early on my journey of applying in practice what I've read here, I'm already seeing the benefits of it and starting to feel like a better person.

My score is 5/5.