Finished Reading High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers by Steve Souders. In this book Souders presents 14 rules that will cut the response time of a site by up to 50%. Steve Souders, Chief Performance Yahoo!, discovered these best practices while optimizing one of the highest traffic sites on the internet.
Unlike other [...]

Finished reading Voyager (Outlander, Book 3) by Diana Gabaldon. In Voyager Gabaldon continues the Outlander saga of 20th-century physician Claire Randall and 18th-century rebel Jamie Fraser. The book begins 20 years after the last book left off. Jamie is imprisoned, and once he’s pardoned he buys a printing business. Believing that Jamie died at Culloden, [...]

Finished reading Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, Book 2) by Diana Gabaldon. Dragonfly in Amber is the second book in the Outlander series. It’s now 1968 and Claire returns to Scotland with her daughter, Brianna. This is Claire’s first trip back to Scotland since her and her husband Frank visited 22 years earlier. Frank just passed [...]

Finished reading Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. The Outlander is about Claire Randall, a strong-willed woman who leads a double life that spans different centuries. While on a belated honeymoon to the Scottish Highlands with her husband Frank in 1945, Claire is thrown back in time to Castle Leoch. While trying to understand the forces that [...]

Finished reading The Accidental Sorcerer (Rogue Agent) by K.E. Mills. Gerald Dunwoody, a third grade wizard and safety inspector for Ottoslands Department of Thaumaturgy. Gerald career is thrown for a loop when he inadvertently blows up a wand factory while trying to prevent disaster. After being fired Gerald takes a job in New Ottosland, an [...]

Finished reading Go MAD – The Art of Making A Difference by Andy Gilbert.
Go Mad is an introduction to Andy Gilbert’s Go Mad framework. Gilbert describes each of the seven principles in-depth and relates them to practical real world examples. Go Mad contains lots of excellent information. If you’ve ever wondered why it is that [...]

Finished reading Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki. The subtitle for Reality Check references outdoing your competition, but in reality the majority of the book focuses on getting a startup off the group. If you can forget about the irritating overuse of “bullshittake” Reality Check is useful book. The book is caulk full of do’s and [...]

Finished Reading SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. SuperFreakonomics picks up where Freakonomics left off. In this book Levitt and Dubner examine bolder, funnier, and even more surprising topics than in the first book. Like Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics challenges everyday beliefs by exploring the hidden side of everything. In the book the authors ask questions [...]

Finished reading The Alchemist’s Pursuit by Dave Duncan. The Alchemist’s Pursuit is the third book in Dave Duncan’s Alchemist’s series, a Venetian fantasy mystery. In this book Alfeo Zeno, apprentice to Nostradamus, is in search of a killer who’s targeting Venice’s prostitutes. After three women are strangled a courtesan and friend of Alfeo, Donna Violetta [...]

Finished reading The Alchemist’s Code by Dave Duncan. The Alchemist’s Code is the sequel to the Alchemist’s Apprentice. In this book an ordinary case of a missing girl turns serious when Venice’s Council of Ten asks Nostradamus to find a spy. Nostradamus’s only clues lie in a ciphered message that hasn’t been decoded.
Dave Duncan [...]