What I Read in 2011
A new year has begun. That means that it’s once again time to take a look back at what books I read over the past year. Unfortunately, it appears I’m trending entirely in the wrong direction. While I managed to read 38 books in 2009 and 33 in 2010, I only made it through 29 this past year. Hopefully I can reverse that trend in 2012.
One interesting trend—at least to me—is that I returned to reading a lot more web related books (10!) this year. This is in no small part related to the A Book Apart series. If they keep churning out quality books like this, that count is likely to stay very high.
As always, if the book made this list, then I enjoyed it on some level. There are far too many good books out there to suffer through one that doesn’t interest me. If I’m not enjoying it I set it aside.
If you’re looking for specific recommendations, “The Invisible Man” (which I had read before and will read again) and “The Demolished Man” top my (short) list of fiction. “Obliquity”, “Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!” and “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” are at the top for non-fiction (excluding the web-related ones).
Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Linchpin by Seth Godin
Pull by David Siegel
The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
Obliquity by John Kay
Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte (See my review)
Adaptive Web Design by Aaron Gustafson
CSS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm
The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane
Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
The Invisible Man by HG Wells
The Filter Bubble by Eli Parson
Big Deal by Robert Hoekman Jr.
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
The Information by James Gleick
Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski (See my review)
Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walter
Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halverson
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! by Douglas Coupland
Mindfire by Scott Berkun
Simple and Usable by Giles Colborne
Loose by Martin Thomas