Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan

I have never expected that such man exists in our reality. Engineer from Google who taught colleagues meditation.

Reading all these jokes, stories and sometimes stupid thoughts made me feel happy. Like one mindful breath a day.

I ordered paper copy after ending electronic one. I want to read it again and let the meditation became part of my life.

The Inner Game of Music by Barry Green

Playing instrument is more than making sounds. It is also ffeelings, inner changes and surpises that make it so magical.

Author uses some meditation ideas and tons of real experience to enhance and deepen music experience of all his students and himself.

Magic is not in music. It appears when let ourselfs to feel our own feelings whhile world around us is filled with changing sounds.

The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton

This guy really made some noise. Maybe he is making some new church or trying to get some millions.

His story about membrane as a brain of cell - worth all the book. And after all, genes are not determining our future.

As controversial as it is I liked reading it. We get what we believe. And there is enough mysteries for many generations.

Amazon Sample Books

Ten years ago if you wanted to read a good book you had to go to bookstore, ask your friends or read some reviews.

But then number of available books sky-rocketed and you could buy many books in digital format. But how to chose?

Here comes Amazon reviews, recommendations and my most beloved - samples. Read first part of the book - it is free.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

This is the most touchy-feely book that I have ever read in my life. But after reading it I have found some peace.

We can think more about how we feel instead of how we look. We experience shame, anxiety, joy and peace from time to time.

We are kind to others as much as we accept our imperfection. If we resist feeling bad things - we are immune to good things.

Wired to care by Dev Patnaik

Before reading this book I had a myth in my mind. You should know more technical stuff, you should haev more experience, you should think harder and...

And you may succeed inspite of you actions. But there is another way - listen to people, fell what they feel, meet them in real life.

Needfinding - maybe the least that you remember about this book. Peoples needs last longer than solutions or companies. What do you really need?

Lauren Ipsum by Carlos Bueno, Ytaelena López

This is a lovely story about a girl who encounters funny and sometimes scary puzzles on her way home to Hamilton.

Recursion? Jargon? Authentication and building of lighthouse network? This story is not only smart but it also miraculously short!

Sometimes it is a godd thing to remember what magc worlds surrounds us. And there is always time to play with it!

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Do you know Matrix cinema? A world where people connect to complicated computer generated world and become its "citizens".

William Gibson coined word Matrix for this virtual reality. Where hackers are heroes fighting with AI, defense systems and etc.

This book is not just part of a story. It is an interesting inspiring step for computer culture in our society. Anyone who really likes computers should give it a try.

Team Geek by Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman

Authors of this book done real programming and open-source project management. You can check :) by yourself.

What engineers want to achieve in 5 years? Learn new staff, ship great products  and work with smart people.

No more mythical hero-stories about one person made Linux, Emacs or whatever. It is all about people. HRT?

Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code by Jeff Atwood

You know geek behind Stackoverflow.com site? There he is. And he is also quite productive blogger.

Think about physical health, do care about your work, learn new things and many other simple true things.

This compilation was some sort of inspiring for me. We do get what we really work toward to.

Art & Fear by David Bayles, Ted Orland

Artists cope with uncertainty every day. That is their path to excitement and maybe fame or wealth.

This book contains some good ideas. But they are hidden behind some pessimistic and too serious observations.

Making things, can make you do more things. But is it what you really want? No one knows.

The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane

I really like reading pop psychology. From the title of this I guessed that this book will be plain marketing and consulting crap.

I was wrong.

Beside all the words about client and success stories of some unnamed CEOs and managers I have found some true pearls of thought.

The way you feel is shown by your body language. Tune yourself to think about better parts of life, success, good ideas. Or just read a sample from Amazon. It worth a try.

The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics by Christopher Duncan

I don't know if it is reality for America. But I am sure that this book describes most part of programmers life in enterprise company.

Politics, meetings, agendas of different "suits", strange behaviour of other buddy programmers. It all as it is.

And you know what? There is a solution. Don't be a monkey coder. Listen and talk to other people. Worth read.

Mindfire Bige Ideas for curious minds by Scott Berkun

Compilation of thought provoking essays. Some of them are stupid, some of them are interesting. It gives some insights...

Started on kiskstarter before Seth Godin decided to jump up. It is a really nice and successful experiment.

Author is a really hard-working guy. His book about public presentations is plain awesomeness.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Before reading this book I was sure that what I see and remember is a stone-hard truth. I am still fascinated by how narrow was my mind about it.

We are strongly influenced by our emotions. We have certain brain part that allows us to predict future. And you know what?

We are extremely bad at understanding and predicting things that make us happy. Want some more?

One click by Richard Brandt

Bezos does not know his biological father. He is a technical nerd who invested in space start-up more than 10 years ago. Do you know the idea behind old nike shoe?

Book is not fantastic. But it can add some pieces information about survivor of first dot-com bubble burst. Grow fast while being obsessed with customers obsession...

Bold, nerdy, smicro-managing visionary? After this book your opinion about Amazon.com will be much more complex. Wanna try?

The Elements of Style - White & Strunk

You hardly ever heard of that book if you have never been interested by good writing. And by "good" I mean concise, expressive, and idea-oriented.

You can find there some tricks about composing sentences, interesting thoughts about text formatting and other cool things.

The best way about it - size. You need about half an hour to read it till the end. Cheers.

The Art of Non-Conformity

Have you ever wanted to leave your work and start to travel around the world? Do you have dreams about great things you will do in your life? You want to work for yourself and be free? Then you can read further.

Chris Guillebeau is an interesting person and he has done some truly inspiring things. Helping to poor people in Africa, writing book that describes some of his life philosophy, making articles for New Your Time and etc.

I don't want to write for too long. Do the things you love, work harder then you could do it in your office cubicle, try to spend some part of your time on things that are you legacy, that can be done only by you for a moment.

Дзен и искусство ухода за мотоциклом

        Эту работу Пирсига трудно однозначно отнести к художественной литературе, но благодаря милому сюжету все эти философские сложности читать немного легче.
        Можно по-разному давать оценки книгам, как и фильмам и другим творческим работам. Одни будут пересказывать сюжет, дробить приведенные логические доводы и ссылки на Аристотеля, Платона, Канта. Я пойду с другого края, расскажу о впечатлениях и ощущениях после прочтения.
        Если вы привыкли во всем искать смысл, логику, систему, то наверняка знаете, что находятся люди, которые не вписываются в этим рамки, но между тем они очень нам интересны. Мы сами не ведем себя основываясь на жесткой логике. Можно взять описание природы, и даже с самыми красивыми эпитетами это будет расчленение картины, отдельные независимые части которой будут описаны словами. И если вспомнить пейзажи глядя на которые вы говорили: "Красиво!". То разве можно найти одну конкретную деталь или особенность, которая "содержит" красоту?
        В моем понимании дзен - что-то такое трудно объяснимое напрямую, а между тем это ощущение внутреннего спокойствия когда мы ощущаем себя живыми. Краткий пример из книги - один человек чинит и настраивает свой мотоцкил сам, а другой считает что это задача механиков. Первый ощущает удовольствие от того, что он может понять идеи заложенные в конструкции мотоцкиклам, понимает его особенности, он хочет и делает так чтобы тот работал без проблем. Как если бы в его сознании не было одтельно мотоциклам, а отдельно его самого.
        Второй считает, что его единица двухколесного транспорта всего лишь инструмент, который может приносить беды и нужны шаманы из ближайшей мастерской чтобы его чинить. Это почти враждебная его существу техника, которую он не понимает, боится и ненавидит, но вынужден ею пользоваться потому что хочет быстрее передвигаться по дорогам. Я думаю это яркий пример мышления, которое поделило часть миро жестко на части и теперь испытывает дискомфорт.
        Эта книга понравится определенно не многим, но если у вас когда-нибудь будет чувство, что вы что-то делаете, а никакого удовлетворения от дела вы не получаете, то наверное вам стоит прочитать "Дзен и искусство ухода за мотоциклом".

Java Puzzlers by Bloch

There are tons of books about programming. Hundreds of them are platform-specific. And obly several are great.

If you really see yourself as a serious java developer you should try this battle against JVM specifications and edge cases.

Sometimes it is real fun to get the answer that it absolutely different from your thoughts about java.