Book-Review

One weekend many years ago, my youngest daughter Erin was looking for something to do. She was a very creative child so I suggested “why don’t you write a book?” She said she could write one, if she only had a title. I told her that you could write a book about almost any title. I randomly picked: What the duck didn’t see (with the emphasis on didn’t) To get her started, I wrote some content, then asked her to continue.

2022-01-25

It’s been a while coming, but my latest book is now out. Implementing Power BI in the Enterprise is now available in both paperback and eBook. The eBook versions are available in all Amazon stores, and also through most book distributors through Ingram Spark distribution. I’ve had a few people ask about DRM-free ePub and PDF versions. While the Kindle version on Amazon is their normal DRM setup, you can purchase the DRM free version directly from us here:

2021-06-18

I get a lot of book recommendations from friends. One that I’d heard about a number of times was Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life so I thought I’d check it out. I don’t overly love the title. I think having expletives in book titles is a bad omen. For me, they are in the same category as, and are reminiscent of, childhood fart jokes.

2021-04-07

I love short stories, so I was really excited when one of the Audible Originals a while back was a set of eight short stories. The Other Animals is a compilation of short stories by a variety of authors (Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Ken Liu, R. Eric Thomas, Lulu Miller, Shruti Swamy, Max McClure, Kaeli Swift, and Kelly Weinersmith). I really didn’t know what to expect with this book. The ratings from other listeners are high.

2021-03-31

I have a lot of people who recommend books to me. I order many of them. If the book has impressed one of my friends, I’m keen to see what they liked about it. That’s how I came to read Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life you Want by Seth Godin. The title is making a pretty big claim, but the content? It’s ok.

2021-03-24

A few weeks back, I finished reading The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries. There have been a lot of books on Lean methodology over the years, so I didn’t know what to expect with this one. But it was published back in 2001 (i.e. the turn of the century) and that’s when the Lean methodology was still fairly new in entrepreneur circles. I’ve seen others comment that this was the “single most informative book on the iterative entrepreneural process”.

2021-03-17

Over the years, I’ve had a number of friends tell me that they really enjoyed Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe, and illustrated by Jason Kelly. Many regard it as one of the best and most useful fitness books ever written. So I had to read it, even though some of its strongest supporters (pun intended) revered it, almost to some sort of cult status. What an interesting book. As I age, I realise the importance of mobility and core strength.

2021-03-10

I tend to read a large number of entrepreneur-related books. Some are better than others. I almost didn’t get a copy of Passive Income: How to Make Money from Home, Skyrocket your Income at Lightning Speed as the title pretty much put me off as it sounded so cheesy, but for some reason I did listen to the audiobook. I also don’t normally write reviews for books that I really don’t like.

2021-03-03

I was pleased to get sent a copy of Benjamin Nevarez’s new book High Performance SQL Server. I’ve known Benjamin for a long time. He’s a very skilled SQL Server professional, and you’ll see him at conferences around the world. (Or at least once Covid is tackled more completely). And the technical reviewer for the book is another very skilled old friend in Mark Broadbent. So my expectations were high for the new edition of this book.

2021-02-26

Richard Dawkins is a controversial figure. I’ve got some mixed opinions on him. On one hand, I suspect that in a hundred year’s time, The God Delusion will be regarded as a seminal piece of writing. On the other hand, I’ve seen how some of my religious friends find him abrasive. Most of the time when I see this though, what I suspect much of the criticism of him comes from, is that people just don’t like having their long term beliefs challenged.

2021-02-24