What I'm reading: Steal Like An Artist, Joel on Software, The Blind Men & The Elephant

Prompted in part by a question from the talented Brianne Garcia and in part by yet-another-Amazon-shipping-notice, herewith what I'm reading*:

Steal Like An Artist 

Pop self-help, attractively presented. Nuggets that resonated include, "quit picking fights and go make something" and "keep a log book" (for which I use idonethis, of course)

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Mixed feelings about this book. Where by mixed I mean, I put it down a week ago and I haven't been able to pick it up again. Perhaps it's the ever-so-slightly grating I'm-so-evolved-and-you-can-be-too tone in which it's written. Perhaps it's the belaboured analogy to the poem by Saxe. Perhaps because, for a book about project management, it never quite defines what PM is and spends quite a lot of time making it sound truly soul-destroying. My marginalia and underlining have been relatively limited - never a good sign. 

Joel on Software

Last year I had one of those headasplode moments when I realized the company behind Trello - a nifty bit of kit that would be so much better if it allowed me to update the account email address - was FogCreek Software, of founded-by-Joel-Spolsky fame. And I say fame, because both FogCreek and Joel's eponymous blog have been around since 2000 (survived the first bust, FogCreek did), and in his "spare time" Spolsky co-founded Stack Overflow. I'd been reading Joel on Software (the blog) for so long that I forgot Spolsky actually, you know, made software. And using Trello reminded me that it had been some time since I dug into his blogging archives. But you know what's a pain? Navigating blog archives. So I bought the book - which is basically a collection of his better blog posts from 2000-2004 - instead. Reading this book is like going back in time (woah! OS/2! Jabs at Mozilla and MacOS!). But many of the lessons and discussions are evergreen. And the nostalgia is fun. (And yes, I admit to having ordered More Joel on Software) 

* These are all Amazon affiliate links, which means that if you click through to Amazon and purchase the linked item, I'll get a tiny percentage of what you spent - at no cost to you - and which I will inevitably use to buy more books.