In the world of software development, managers have deployed many
strategies over the years to guide complex software projects. As the
result of the numerous headaches and failures, different methodologies
have arisen that try to handle the malleable process of developing
software. The so-called waterfall approach, a mirror image of
traditional management of most non-software projects, first
entails producing an unequivocal specification that theoretically
leads to a simple implementation process.

Nevertheless, this waterfall approach failed time and time again for
many software projects. In comes the Agile software development
approach. It encourages rapid and incremental development, continuous
communication with the customers, adaptation and self organizing
teams.

Scrum is a method of agile software development, and Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber gives
real life stories of teams that used scrum successfully and
unsuccessfully. The stories are short and illustrative of common
pitfalls and misunderstandings that teams encounter when first using
Scrum. For example, one such story told of a Scrum Master running the
daily scrum meeting, asking each developer what he/she has
accomplished and assigning them their next task. This is a major
violation of Scrum; Scrum teams are self managed. The Scrum Master
facilitates the use of Scrum for the project, but scrum teams decide
who works on what and the best way to get the job done correctly.

This book was a quick read and great introduction to Scrum. No
software development process is perfect, however, and neither will any
new methodologies that may appear in the future be either. In my ideal
world of software projects, developers should never need to attend
meetings, interruptions will never spring up, and they will work
unbothered in "the flow" all day long. However, people need to
exchange information and software development is a team game. The
Scrum process seems to be a great way to boost productivity, satisfy
managers and stakeholders, and increase workplace moral.

The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master was a quick and relatively fun read. The book covers many broad topics of everyday programming, such as project management, documentation, testing and automation. While reading I noticed that I already follow many of the principles outlined in the book, but reading it on paper helped encourage me to continue to do so.

Most of material new to me concerned project management and customer relationships. Two such items include having a project glossary and choosing appropriate ways to pleasantly surprise customers.

All programmers should know the book's material and practice it everyday. In my opinion, college's should require more reading of this type to help prepare students for the real world. Overall, it is a great book for professional programmers.

Many people unfamiliar with Common Lisp believe it's a purely
functional language, but this is untrue. While you can shape your
Common Lisp programs in a functional way, Common Lisp also support
Object Oriented Programming via CLOS, the Common Lisp Object
System. It is truly a multi-paradigm language.

This books teaches all the aspects of CLOS, and although written
several years ago, the knowledge still applies today. After learning
about Object Oriented programming using languages like C++ and Java,
learning about CLOS really opened my eyes to what this style of
programming should feel like. All the other languages now seem to
constrained compared to the power and flexibility of CLOS.

In CLOS, classes only have member variables, called slots, and support
multiple inheritance. They do not define methods. Instead, methods are
defined for Generic Functions which specialize on the classes. While
most OO languages use single dispatch, meaning methods specialize on
only one class, CLOS uses multiple dispatch. It also supports
specializing on distinct object instances. In addition to primary
methods, CLOS has before, after and around methods. You can even
dictate the order in which CLOS calls all of the applicable methods.

I truly enjoyed this book as it expanding my understanding of object
oriented techniques. I hope the mainstream language designers can take
the time to read this and incorporate more of CLOS into today's
popular, but limited, object oriented systems.

The Selfish Gene does a marvelous job explaining the core concepts of
evolution for the lay person. It begins with the predominate theory of
how life began in the primordial soup. It then explains how the first
replicators became the genes that make up our DNA and how the natural
environment shapes evolution by pruning the most adaptive and
advantageous of those genes.

Genes are responsible for manufacturing organisms to help them
replicate. They affect not only its own organism, but the surrounding
environment and other organisms. The book explains how the genes
affect the organisms behavior, and how the behavior of a population of
species follows an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS). The book's
title refers to the concept that genes are really looking after
themselves first, but it also explains how altruistic behavior can
arise from the gene's selfishness. The author adamantly proposes that
we are the first species that can defy our genes and oppose the
ruthless nature of natural selection to make the world a better,
friendlier place.

It worries me that many people are ignorant of evolution. Never once
did my high school offer a class on the topic. In my opinion, everyone
should be familiar with the concepts because I believe it's important
to know how we came to be. I recommend this book to everybody.

Practical Common Lisp has turned into the de facto standard for beginners who want to learn Common Lisp, and deservingly so. The opening chapters delve right into the development style of Common Lisp and show how it differs from more mainstream languages. It covers all the basics and more, eventually leading into chapters explaining how to parse MP3 files and create and create an MP3 Shoutcast server from scratch.

Common Lisp is my favorite language to develop in, but most people I talk to dismiss it as being too old and irrelevant for today's computer applications. I highly disagree. The fact that the language is old is actually one of it's strengths: every design decision seems so well thought out. I've had numerous moments where I commented to myself "you know, it would be nice if this function could do this," and then discovered that it could after reading the documentation. And the development environment is the best out there. The Slime/Emacs/Lisp combination is way ahead of Visual Studio in terms of interactivity, customization, jumping through source files and debugging.

I recommend this book to all developers out there, as learning Common Lisp helped me in my day job as well. At least read through the chapter on creating a unit test framework to get a feel of what software development should be like.

I never have done much reading about psychology before so I thought this book would be a good change of pace for me. The book was easy to read and covered the general ideas about how evolution cause major deficiencies in our brains. Most people don't realize how imperfect we actually are, but just by learning about it we can avoid certain downfalls that all people are prone too.

It was a quick and enjoyable read, but I didn't learn a whole lot from it, probably because I read much about evolution before. Still, I recommend this book for all non-psychology students so they can better understand who they are.

Set in the 1800s, the Piano Tuner is a well written novel about an ordinary man who journey's to the remote jungles of Burma on an odd mission from the British military. There he experiences sights and sounds that he had never seen before, met many interesting people and discovered a source of excitement that was missing from his bland life.

Without revealing any spoils, I found the ending of this book highly engaging, but it still served as a poor penance for the uneventful, unexciting story leading up to it. I found the main character lacking any charm or personality whatsoever. In a sense, I found him distasteful and selfish for leaving his wife behind while seeking adventure. And all through his journey, he did nothing to change his attitude, nothing to prove his worth as a character who deserved respect and admiration.

Though I dislike giving negative reviews, I cannot recommend this book to anyone, but I'm sure others will have different opinions.

Anybody who loves science and technology will love this book. The book is about how technology will involve during the next one hundred years, not at a constant, linear rate, but as a double exponential rate. Ray provides many data and examples of this theory, and explains how the current research done by todays scientists and engineers will change the world more quickly than most people realize.

The book focuses on three areas of science and technology: genetics, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Advancements in each this century will bring major changes, including augmented our intelligence and replacing all of our organs so we could essentially live forever. Machines will become more intelligent than us, for when we create the first machine that can produce a machine smarter than itself, the cycle will iterate at an astonishing rate and machine intelligence will skyrocket past human intelligence. All of these future technologies he describes may seem bizarre, but keep in mind the progress of each one has already begun today.

This book also contains a wealth of online references which I find very interesting and useful. As with any book, it should be regarded with great skepticism. For one thing, we may discover fundamental limits that stop our progressions in a particular area of research, or Ray Kurzweil may underestimate the complexities and challenges of the technologies he wrote about. This book was entertaining. The advancements mentioned are possible but not definite. I recommend this book for every technology lover and for those who are interested in the current research areas of science and technology companies and universities.

The novel 1984 left me feeling dreadful. Not because of the quality of the writing or story, but because of the hopeless world the author created and because, as I read through the book and put myself in Winston's shoes, I could not imagine how to rebel and defeat the party. At times I thought some parts extreme, but then when reflecting about all the slavery and hardships in past society I thought perhaps this novel's world may not be so far fetched after all.

The story started slow for my tastes but the vivid writing and lucid details kept me interested. I felt some parts a bit too drawn out, such as when Winston read a couple chapters of Goldstein's book. But once I hit the book's turning point I found it hard to put down.

Overall, this book was a great change of pace for me. I'm glad I finally took the time to read it, as so many others have before me, and I recommend it to people who love drama, history, politics, or simply great writing.

The topics of physics and the universe have always intrigued me, but since studying them in general has little relevance to my everyday job, I always had difficulty making time to learn about them. I took my last physics course in my freshman year of college and since the only knowledge I learned about the universe came from Discovery channel shows. I liked this book because I felt more in tune about modern physics and the universe after reading it.

This book explains the history of physics, from the Greeks to Isac Newton to modern topics like relativity to string theory. It explains them all in a general sense, enough to grasp the mechanisms but it does not overwhelm the reader with details, as the author geared the book to the wider audience.

Some parts of the book mentioned the intentions of God when he created the universe, which I disliked. The notion of a higher power creating the universe only means we remain even farther away from knowing the true roots of the universe, for then the next obvious question is how was this higher power created? If the unified theory of physics ends up being associated with a creator's intentions I would be gravely disappointed.

Overall, I got exactly what I wanted from this book: a concise overview of modern physics. I doubt I'll find the time to delve deeper into the topic, but I'll make sure to keep up-to-date with the current progress.

Undone is a dark, suspenseful quick-pace novel about a couple's insurance-scamming scheme gone wrong, leading to a world of chaos involving murder, seduction and scandalous blackmail. Set in a small Maine town, the quiet world of the locals becomes disrupted after a suspicious death and a blatant murder. The lives of those involved quickly spiral out of control.

I breezed through this novel as I found myself craving to discover what would happen next. The characters were dark and grim and the entire time I wondered if anyone would find their salvation. If you are looking for a fast and entertaining read, I recommend this book.

Set in the near future, THE ROAD is a story about a father and son
traveling through the bleak, post-apocalyptic world. In the ash
covered earth they struggle scavenging for food and avoiding
cannibalistic nomads, all while trying to keep their wits and humanity
intact.

Cormac's writing style simultaneously paints a hopeless world and
shows the loving bond between father and son. The ash covered
landscapes, toxic air, endless gray skies, constant threat of being
hunted, and sparse scraps of food tests the pair's will to survive.
While reading the novel, I often questioned whether it would be better
for them to die.

This is indeed a great novel; not one that will cheer you up on a
rainy day but move you with intricate emotions. It is a powerful story
with a deep writing style. I intend to keep this on my bookshelf for the
rest of my life.

In his second novel, Khaled Hosseini wrote a more gripping, compelling, page turner than his first, which says a lot considering how much I enjoyed the first novel. This novel follows two women, who grew up in vastly different lifestyles, and shows how the wars in Afghanistan ruined their families and eventually brought them together.

Throughout reading the novel, I got the feeling that these two lives, however dreadful and punished they seemed, are typical in Afghanistan. This made me realize how much I take for granted, the simple freedoms that I practice without the thought that some other force could snatch them from me. In this sense, the book made me more grateful for the country I live in.

Overall, I found the book easy to read and finished it quickly. The tale seemed powerful and held my attention till the end. Though not one of my all time favorites, I would recommend this book to others.

I recently finished the critically acclaimed novel “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and understand why the book received so much praise. The story contains vibrant characters and a compelling plot, but for me the most interesting and beneficial aspect of the story was the exposure to a different culture, one where all my previous knowledge originated from news reports of war and violence. Reading about this tiny part of Afghan life helped me realize how little I knew about their customs and beliefs.

Although gripping and entertaining, I would not consider this novel my favorite of all time, but definitely liked it enough to read the follow up book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I plan to do in the coming months.

Ian McEwan's tale about a guilt stricken woman troubled by an unfortunate lie she orchestrated as a young teenager really displays his proficient, magnificent prose. I thoroughly enjoyed the author's mastery of describing his characters. Most writers are content to describe the physical characteristics and superficial emotions of their characters. Ian McEwan, on the other hand, shows how his characters think, such as the worrisome sentiments of a migraine-sickened mother to the coping fantasies of a child struggling with growing up. Within these life-like descriptions he wrote a compelling story that, while takes a while to set in motion, gripped me until the end.