My Year in Books 2026

By: Mark Drummond On: Thu 31 December 2026
In: README
Tags: #books

[DNF] means did not finish. Usually a bad sign. [R] means a re-read.

My Goodreads.

In Progress

  • Barling, Julian. The Science of Leadership.
  • Donovan, Alan; Kernighan, Brian. The Go Programming Language. Dated, but still "the Bible".
  • Edwards, Alex. Let's Go.
  • Lockhart, Paul. Measurement.
  • Petzold, Charles. The Annotated Turing.
  • Rais, Razi. Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator.
  • Stephenson, Neil. Seveneves.
  • Taleb, Nassim. Antifragile.

The Stand Outs

  • Kahn, David. The Codebreakers. If, at ~1,000 pages, this seems overwhelming, read Singh's The Code Book instead. But if you want the deets, this is the one and only.
  • Marquet, David. Turn the Ship Around!. I'm not usually a fan of "leadership" books. Marquet is an exception.
  • Taleb, Nassim. The Black Swan. Taleb is always good. Not a fan of his occasionally, and unnecessarily, acerbic attitude, but this belongs in the "re-read" pile.

Worth a Read

  • Buchmann, Johannes A., et al. Introduction to Public Key Infrastructures.
  • Cheshire, Jim. Microsoft Azure Fundamentals.
  • Diogenes, Yuri, et al. Microsoft Security, Compliance, and Identity Fundamentals.
  • Sapkowski, Andrezej. Crossroads of Ravens. It felt a bit weak in the beginning, but I ended up really enjoying this. Makes me want to play Witcher 3 again.
  • Seguin, Karl. The Little Go Book. A bit dated, but still worthwhile. And you can't beat the price.

YMMV

  • Farrell, Warren. Role Mate to Soul Mate. These books are all the same. If you've read one, you've read them all. Practice grace, practice compassion. Pause before you respond. That's all you need to know.
  • Galloway, Scott. Notes on Being a Man. Possibly useful life advice for men in their late teens and early 20s. There may be a few nuggets in here for older men too, but not enough to warrant spending your hard-earned clams on.
  • [DNF] Watkins, Michael D. The First 90 Days. The level of effort required to learn and implement the book's 10-step plan (the mere presence of an "X-step plan" should serve as a warning) is not worth whatever benefit you might get from learning and implementing the plan.

Not Recommended


For any feedback or corrections, please write in to: blog [at] markdrummond [dot] ca