Lately i felt the need to work on my management skills so apart from practicing each day i decided to search for some inspiration in 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts. All i can say is that it’s yet another book in the series that is worth reading.

I learned a couple of valuable lessons from 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts so i would certainly recommend this very readabile book!

Earlier this month i ordered my copy of Refactoring to Patterns. This books has two parts: the first part describes patterns and code smells (anti-patterns) and the second part is a catalog of refactorings. The first part is not bad, but i appreciated the second part much more. I did not read the book from front to cover and skipped the ‘mechanics’ sections (abstract steps to take in order to accomplish a particular refactoring). I focussed on the ‘example’ sections instead which demonstrate the application of the previously mentionned mechanics.

During the reading of this book i had a couple of ‘aha’ moments which gave me the feeling that i understood (appreciated) a certain pattern better. All in all a good book to read.

This is probably one of the shortest book reviews ever, but there is not much to say about The Nomadic Developer: Surviving and Thriving in the World of Technology Consulting. Just read it if you are (or considering to become) an IT-consultant because it really covers both good and bad aspects in depth.

I am very disappointed with Professional WPF Programming: NET Development with the Windows Presentation Foundation. Apart from the two chapters that cover Expression Blend i found nothing worth reading in this book. This is probably the last Wrox book that i buy.

I felt it was time to get up to speed with WPF so i decided to buy Programming WPF, Second edition. This book answered a lot of my newbie questions (where is the application entry point etc) right from the start. I liked it so much that i decided to read a second time Most definitely recommended.

For my summer holidays i needed a book that was easy readable (size, weight, content) and Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship was a perfect match for my reading sessions at the pool. Even better, i found inspiration to write cleaner (and thus better) code. This book is most certainly recommend!

Because i really enjoyed managing humans i bought another book mentionned by Joel Spolsky: Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently. This book would be an excellent read at the pool on a holiday location, but at home it was nothing more than an entertaining read. Not really recommended.

A while ago we had a session on messaging at ALT.NET Belgium and it was then that i decided i should order my copy of Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions. I found first half of the book pretty interesting but got bored around chapter 8 and skipped some sections from there. All in all this book this book is pretty good and if you know a thing or two about TCP/IP implementations you might even recognize some patterns in a different problem space.

I believe it was at an Alt.Net meeting that the Enterprise Service Bus book was mentionned and i recently decided to give it a read. This book covers everything there is to know about an ESB. From a developer point of view it can serve as a good introduction to the core components and applied patterns but nothing more.