There were a handful I really enjoyed reading this year, mostly some older stuff. I could never get into fiction, so I'm more of a non-fiction and computer book kind of guy.
* Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler
Published in 2005 I believe, but still _very_ relevant. Good concrete architecture patterns and it's cool to see these patterns before they were no-brainers.
* SQL Performance Explained - Markus Winand
Actually how I first convinced my company to start paying for my books (and there have been 15+ since). We had a query that was running in an absurd amount of time for our largest customer and we couldn't get it down. It was a real blocker for releasing a feature, so I bought this book while visiting family and tore through it on the plane home. Got that query down from over 10 minutes to about 12 seconds. Through a light caching layer in front and we were cooking with gas. Part of that query's long runtime is definitely due to a poor initial implementation, but this book taught me a lot about indexes and how they're not being used constantly like I thought they were.
* Clean Architecture - Robert Martin
Always recommended around here. Finally gave it a read and the central message of dependency inversion is a good one. I took a "software engineering" course in Uni that taught us SOLID principles in a text book way where we didn't actually apply them, but working in the real world has taught me that they're appropriate in many cases, and why that's the case. Uncle Bob does a great job demonstrating that.
* Your Money or Your Life - Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez
I reread this about once a year so I'm going to count it :) Fantastic book that keeps the concept of money and what is really does for us grounded. Helps me keep my expenses down by not being a nut with money. Working in software is a very fortunate career path for a lot of us, and I want to make sure I can make the most of it.
* Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler
Published in 2005 I believe, but still _very_ relevant. Good concrete architecture patterns and it's cool to see these patterns before they were no-brainers.
* SQL Performance Explained - Markus Winand
Actually how I first convinced my company to start paying for my books (and there have been 15+ since). We had a query that was running in an absurd amount of time for our largest customer and we couldn't get it down. It was a real blocker for releasing a feature, so I bought this book while visiting family and tore through it on the plane home. Got that query down from over 10 minutes to about 12 seconds. Through a light caching layer in front and we were cooking with gas. Part of that query's long runtime is definitely due to a poor initial implementation, but this book taught me a lot about indexes and how they're not being used constantly like I thought they were.
* Clean Architecture - Robert Martin
Always recommended around here. Finally gave it a read and the central message of dependency inversion is a good one. I took a "software engineering" course in Uni that taught us SOLID principles in a text book way where we didn't actually apply them, but working in the real world has taught me that they're appropriate in many cases, and why that's the case. Uncle Bob does a great job demonstrating that.
* Your Money or Your Life - Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez
I reread this about once a year so I'm going to count it :) Fantastic book that keeps the concept of money and what is really does for us grounded. Helps me keep my expenses down by not being a nut with money. Working in software is a very fortunate career path for a lot of us, and I want to make sure I can make the most of it.