Solving my Tsundoku: The Return of TESTHEAD Book Reviews

by | Syndicated

As I was settling in and preparing for my journey home from Ireland (which will include a flight from Dublin to Toronto (roughly eight hours), plus a seven hour layover, and then a flight from Toronto to San Francisco (roughly another seven hours), I figured it was a great time to dig in and work through some of the books I have received to review, as well as some I have picked up to work with due to the work that I do as a tester and occasional programmer.

I receive a number of e-books in PDF format from a variety of sources. Some are offered to me free for me to review, many more are purchased by me to work through and bulk up my geek brain (well, that was the goal in any event). At some point, the desire to read and apply got overtaken by the real life aspects of work, family, testing initiatives and other things I do. All the while, my book pile keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Zeger van Hese gave a great keynote talk at EuroSTAR this week, and in the process, he talked a bit about those great linguistic terms that English doesn’t have a succinct single word for. One example that resonated with me (to the point of causing physical discomfort, to be honest) was the Japanese word “Tsundoku” (積ん読, (hiragana つんどく) which is, according to Wiktionary “(informal) the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other such unread books“.

The first way to deal with a problem is to realize you have a problem, and to that end, I have decided I am going to do something about that problem. How so? By making one of my “bold boasts” I make from time to time. Since we are still a few weeks before New Years, I cannot be accused of making a New Year’s Resolution (since I don’t make them 😉 ), but I can declare a new goal, and that new goal is that I shall henceforth and forthwith start whittling down my book collection and actually read, apply and review the stack of books that I have. To that end, you may expect, in no particular order, reviews to start appearing for the following:

  1. Accessibility Handbook
  2. Apache JMeter
  3. Application Testing with Capybara
  4. Backbone.js Cookbook
  5. Beginning PHP 6 Apache MySQL 6 Web Development
  6. Computer Science Programming Basics in Ruby
  7. Confident Ruby
  8. Crackproof Your Software
  9. Design Accessible Web Sites
  10. Design Driven Testing
  11. Eloquent JavaScript, 2nd Edition
  12. Everyday Scripting with Ruby
  13. Exceptional Ruby
  14. Good Math
  15. Head First Ajax
  16. Head First HTML and CSS
  17. Head First HTML5 Programming
  18. Head First JavaScript
  19. Head First JavaScript Programming
  20. Head First Mobile Web
  21. Head First PHP and MySQL
  22. Head First SQL
  23. Head First jQuery
  24. Higher Order Perl
  25. How Linux Works
  26. Jasmine JavaScript Testing
  27. JavaScript for Kids
  28. JavaScript Security
  29. JavaScript Testing Beginner’s Guide
  30. JavaScript and JSON Essentials
  31. JMeter Cookbook
  32. jQuery Cookbook
  33. Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook
  34. Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things
  35. Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms
  36. Learning Metasploit Exploitation and Development
  37. Learning Python Testing
  38. Manga Guide to Physics
  39. Manga Guide to Statistics
  40. Mastering Regular Expressions
  41. Metaprogramming Ruby
  42. Metasploit Penetration Testing Cookbook
  43. Metasploit The Penetration Testers Guide
  44. Modern Perl
  45. More Agile Testing
  46. PHP MySQL JavaScript HTML5 All in One for Dummies
  47. Pride and Paradev
  48. Pro HTML5 Accessibility
  49. Rails Crash Course
  50. Regular Expressions Cookbook
  51. Responsive Web Design By Example
  52. Robot Framework Test Automation
  53. Ruby Wizards
  54. Running Lean
  55. Selenium Design Patterns and Best Practices
  56. Selenium WebDriver Practical Guide
  57. Specification by Example
  58. Test Driven Web Development with Python
  59. TestComplete Cookbook
  60. TestComplete Made Easier
  61. The Art of Application Performance Testing
  62. The Art of Software Testing, 3rd Edition
  63. The Selenium Guidebook
  64. The Well Grounded Rubyist
  65. Web Development with Django Cookbook
  66. Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux
  67. Webbots Spiders and Screen Scrapers 2nd edition
  68. Wicked Cool PHP
  69. Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts
  70. Wireshark Essentials
  71. Zero to One
Yes, this is a line in the sand. Yes, I intend to fix this problem of mine. No, I cannot say which order these reviews will appear, but be sure, they are coming. Yes, I intend to have at least one posted either before I leave Toronto or by the time I leave SFO (i.e. my home airport). Yes, I encourage you all to call me on it if I slack off.

One way or another, this begins today, and it will not finish until all of the stack is read, worked and commented on. That may take awhile ;).