Category: Non-Fiction
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Emily Chang – Brotopia
For the last few years, I’ve been reading a lot more about women in tech and the problems faced. I’m really lucky at the company I’m in now that gender is not an issue, but it’s still a really big problem in the industry and I think the only way we can change things is
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Lee Cockerell – The Customer Rules
I bought this book to read as I thought it would give me some insights into providing better service at work. I’m not on the support department, but I think it’s important for everyone to know how best we can help the clients we’re working with. Unfortunately for me, this book was quite focused around
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Heydon Pickering – Inclusive Design Patterns
I’ve always found the topic of accessiblity an interesting one, and I this book had so many great ideas that I ended up turning it into the basis of a lightning talk at work. I really appreciated that each section started off with typical bad practices, then shows you how to change what you’ve done
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Arani Sen – Holy Spirit Radicals
I ordered this book after we did a group reading plan of the book of Acts with my Church Life Group over the summer, and this popped up as an advert in my Facebook feed: it seemed like it was placed there for a reason! Written by the vicar of Christchurch in Armley, it’s a
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Sheryl Sandberg – Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead
The subject of women in the workplace is something that has always interested me, especially coming from a career where for the first 8 years I never worked with another female web developer – all my female colleagues were either PAs/account managers or graphic designers. I’m really lucky now working for a team that is
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Robert C. Martin – Clean Code
I was lent this book over a year ago by my work, but for one reason or another, I’ve never quite got round to reading it (I blame Brandon Sanderson!). But having now read it, I do wish I’d got around to reading it before. Read now, the book for me reinforced a lot of
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Gemma Willis & Emma Randall – Diary of a Disciple: Luke’s Story
I bought this book thinking I was just reading it to check if it would be okay for our Sunday School/Youth Group kids, but actually I ended up loving it for myself too! This beautifully designed hardback book is a re-telling of Luke’s Gospel, aimed at children and perfect for them to read either by
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Sarah Millican – How to be Champion
Sarah Millican has been one of my role models for a long time. Unashamedly proud of who she is, I look up to her for so many reasons. I would whole-heartedly recommend you go and buy this book now while it’s still 99p on Kindle, it was a fantastic read. Part autobiography, part advice, I
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Eliyahu M. Goldratt – The Goal
I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages after reading The Phoenix Project last year, and I finally got around to it after spotting it on the shelf at my local library (sidenote: libraries are awesome). I think the thing I appreciated the most about this book was that it felt so easy to
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Kent Beck – Test Driven Development By Example
As my first real dive into test driven development, this book was a great introduction into the practices and the habits that are involved. The one thing that I wish I had done when I started reading is actually trying to implement the examples that are in the book, as I think the practical side
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Claire Harman: Jane’s Fame
I want to start this review by saying that although I was slightly disappointed with this book, that’s more due to me thinking it was going to be something different based on the blurb I read on Goodreads, so don’t necessarily be swayed by the fact that I only gave the book 3 out of
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Nick Page – A Nearly Infallible History of the Reformation
I started reading two books about the reformation at a similar time, and they are very very different books. The other (which I’m still reading) is very dry and serious and hard to get into, but Nick Page manages to take a topic (like Church history) which could be quite boring or unexciting and make it a
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Adrian Plass – Blind Spots in the Bible
Please don’t judge this book by how long it took me to read it! It lends itself really well to being read in small chunks so I’ve been reading it a small part at a time while waiting for the shower to get hot, which means it’s take a long time, but it’s also prolonged
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Timothy Keller – The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
“The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints” I was persuaded into buying this book when someone posted it on Facebook as it’s currently only 99p on Kindle. A couple of days before, I’d had a really awkward 30 minute train journey sat next to an ardent (and argumentative) atheist who
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Robert C. Martin – The Clean Coder
A book about how to be a ‘professional programmer’. I was a bit worried that this book would be a bit ‘dry’ like other techy books I’ve read, but it was written in a way that kept me really engaged. The author added lots of personal anecdotes in his writing which made it easy to
Louise Douglas 