My Year in Books (2023)

Books | . 2 min read (441 words).

During 2023, I read fewer books than usual, only 31 books. Instead, I read more AI research papers and news articles this year. Here are my favourite books!

Topics:

Introduction

After reading and re-reading a lot of my favourite books on business, leadership, and management last year, I took a bit of a break from reading books in general this year and focused on other reading and resting up. I still read (and re-read) some good books that I want to recommend below!

Business and leadership

When it comes to business-related learning, I have focused mostly on reading Financial Times and listening to news through Noa this year and I can recommend that too. Here are my top 3 favourite books from my reading this year:

  1. Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?: What It Takes To Be An Authentic Leader by Rob Goffee, Gareth R. Jones.
  2. Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell.
  3. HBR’s 10 Must Reads for Executive Teams.

Software development

I will write a separate blog post about good AI papers that I recommend. Here are my top 3 favourite books about software development from this year’s reading:

  1. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software by Eric Evans.
  2. A Tour of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup.
  3. Vulkan Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning Vulkan by John M. Kessenich, Graham Sellers.

The C++ book is a great way to freshen up on the language. Domain-Driven Design remains a must-read for anyone who wants to get better at software design, but it is getting quite old so some parts can be safely skimmed. In addition to the Vulkan Programming Guide, the Vulkan Tutorial is great too, as well as reading the standard (see vulkan.org).

AI Ethics

This year, I took an online course from LSE about AI ethics (see the certificate). I also read a few books on the topic. My favourite book on this topic so far is Trustworthy AI: A Business Guide for Navigating Trust and Ethics in AI by Beena Ammanath. EU also has useful Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI.

Other topics

I also read some books about other mixed topics and found these especially interesting:

  1. Overreach by Owen Matthews. About Putin’s war against Ukraine.
  2. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian.
  3. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation 4th Edition by Sharan B. Merriam, Elizabeth J. Tisdell.
  4. The Staff Engineer’s Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change by Tanya Reilly.
  5. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert M. Sapolsky.
Tags: books, leadership, management, business, software-dev, politics, ethics.