I have a bunch of posts to publish however after writing my post about reading wanted to write about what i had been reading over the past year. At this rate not sure if i will cover everything I read since January 2020 however I started a monthly recap from December onwards. I have December & January written now. This is my December post. Hoping to post January sometime this month in addition to some other stuff.
In December 2020 I finished two books and started a third. I finished one productivity, non-fiction and one science-fiction.
The first book I finished was tribal leadership. It was a fascinating book about the psychology of groups of people, a.k.a. tribes and how they organise. A lot of what the authors said resonated with me. I think because what they call a stage four tribe encompasses a lot of the trates and characteristics we have been aspiring for in devops culture. I think it’s hard for me to realise that even though I’ve been trying a lot I still gravitate between stage III and stage IV sometimes. According to the book the use of I versus we is partly the distinction. The good thing was even before reading this book I have tried to move towards the we your the group versus the individual. Not sure who recommended it however I think it was someone at work. Since finishing it I have been recommending it to others especially since we been talking a lot about dev ops culture at work.
The next book I read after tribal leadership was a bit of a change of pace. That was deliberate. I am trying not to read the same type of book back to back. I am also trying not to read too many books in the series straight through to give myself a break. The next book I read was Revelation space. I already read Chasm CIty. That was technically the 2nd book in the universe written by Alastair Reynolds. I was worried since there were mixed reviews about the audio performance on audible for Revelation space. After listening to the book I can understand what people were complaining about however it was by no means as bad as described or making it difficult to read/listen to the book. The story was pretty good and having read Chasm City did not ruin Revelation space. I have read that it shouldn’t prior to reading Chasm City so I was pleased that that was true. Clocking in around 20 hours to listen to it was pretty long but not the longest I have read. The plot was slow going at some points however they brought things together pretty nicely. Based on how much I enjoyed Revelation Space I will listen to the next book in the series. I am just going to take a slight break and change gears a bit first.
I finished Revelation space right after Christmas. I started on the next book straight away however I did not get to finish it until after the New Year. That means I will talk about it in my January reviews.