The main theme of my blog is books, so I decided to write about the best ones I’ve read this year and would recommend.
I’ve read 78 books, but the number isn’t as impressive as it seems because it includes several short children’s books that I read with my younger kids before bed. Still, there are many great books I can recommend.
- Agile Retrospective Kickstarter — a very good guide for running effective retrospectives in teams.
- Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great — an excellent complement to the previous book, especially since many ideas are borrowed from it.
- Game as a Business — Alexey Savchenko wrote a wonderful guide on the various stages of game development.
- The Numbers Game — Vasily Sabirov adapted his training course into a book, which is now an excellent manual for game analysts and product managers.
- This Button Needs Text — a short and useful breakdown of UX copywriting.
- Crypt-Your-Mathics 3.0 — if you know nothing about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, this book is a great starting point.
- Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games — the autobiography of one of the most legendary game designers, Sid Meier.
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — this year, I reread Patrick Lencioni’s book again, and I still recommend it to everyone.
- To Hire or Not to Hire? Or How to Interview a Developer — one of the best books on conducting interviews, and it’s free, too.
- Venture Deals — a great introduction to venture investing: how to secure funding and not end up at a disadvantage.
As for fiction, I didn’t read much this year, and most of it consisted of well-known works that I either finally decided to read or was revisiting. I’ll highlight just one:
- Britt-Marie Was Here — a wonderful novel by one of the best contemporary authors, Richard Backman. I savor each of his books and wait a long time before picking up the next one.
And the most delightful part: this year, I received the first review of my own book (only in Russian) — Graphomaniacs Don’t Cry.
