Over the course of 2017, I read more than 75 books. That’s an average of more than one book per week. In my opinion, reading informative and thought-provoking books is well worth the investment in time and brain power.
In the list below, I’ve started with 5 of the books that most influenced me in 2017. Each of these books has directly benefited me in my professional life as a Consulting Electronic Engineer. I’ve then listed all the books that I read throughout the year, ordered by category.
Reading a variety of books allows me to enhance my business skills, stay abreast of the latest technologies and trends, indulge my passion for studying the history of my industry, and where necessary, switch off.
Many of my clients are start-ups or fast-moving SMEs. With that in mind, staying up to date with the latest technology trends is not a luxury for me – it is a necessity. I regularly speak to enthusiastic founders that aspire to build the next Apple, develop the next cryptocurrency or use wearable technology to improve our wellbeing. Drawing on the collective knowledge of the thought leaders in a variety of fields helps me to add value to the teams that I consult for and provide design services to.
I enjoy reading daily and with the advent of audio books, I can “read” almost anywhere nowadays. Audible must be the most consistently used app on my phone!
Are there any books that you think I would like? Please let me know in the comments.
My Top 5 Books of 2017
- How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of ‘Intangibles’ in Business
Douglas W. Hubbard
Don’t be deceived by the name – this is not just a business book. When the author says how to measure anything, he means it! I have used the lessons learned in this book to improve the quality of my PCB schematic reviews!
- Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
Richard P. Rumelt
- Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent
Stephen M. Key and Janice Kimball Key
- Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of the How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry
Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler
- Accounting for the Numberphobic: A Survival Guide for Small Business Owners
Dawn Fotopulos
Biographies and Memoirs
Jenson Button: Life to the Limit
Jenson Button
Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World
Richard Rhodes
Leonardo Da Vinci
Walter Isaacson
My Share of the Task
General Stanley McChrystal
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
Jon Lee Anderson
Galileo
J. L. Heilbron
The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age
Bettina Hoerlin and Gino Segre
Jonas Salk: A Life
Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs
Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World
Marc Raboy
Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britain
Julian Glover
Becoming Steve Jobs: How a Reckless Upstart Became a Visionary Leader
Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli
The Spy Who Changed the World
Mike Rossiter
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell
How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer
Adrian Newey
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State
Glenn Greenwald
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
Oliver Sacks
Mathematics
A Most Elegant Equation: Euler’s Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics
David Stipp
Fermat’s Last Theorem: The Story of a Riddle that Confounded the World’s Greatest Minds for 358 Years
Simon Singh
The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
Simon Singh
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Chaos: Making a New Science
James Gleick
The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Leonard Mlodinow
Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak
Travis Sawchik
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner
Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction
Fred Piper and Sean Murphy
A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics: A Neuroscientist on How to Make Sense of a Complex World
Daniel Levitin
Business
Accounting for the Numberphobic: A Survival Guide for Small Business Owners
Dawn Fotopulos
Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
John Brooks
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
Richard P. Rumelt
Sell Your Ideas With or Without a Patent
Stephen M. Key and Janice Kimball Key
One Simple Idea, Revised and Expanded Edition: Turn Your Dreams into a Licensing Goldmine While Letting Others Do the Work
Stephen M. Key
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Sheryl Sandberg
How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of ‘Intangibles’ in Business
Douglas W. Hubbard
From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue
Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross
Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of the How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry
Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler
Surviving and Thriving in Uncertainty: Creating the Risk Intelligent Enterprise: Value Creation and Protection
Frederick Funston and Stephen Wagner
How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk
Douglas W. Hubbard and Richard Seiersen
Total Competition: Lessons in Strategy from Formula One
Ross Brawn and Adam Parr
The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups
Randall Stross
Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets are Transforming the Economy – and How to Make Them Work for You
Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne and Sangeet Paul Choudary
Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World
Nicholas Shaxson
Originals: How Non-Conformists Change the World
Adam Grant
History
The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
Clay Risen
Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA
Amy Shira Teitel
A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev
Vladimir Zubok
The End of the Cold War: 1985 – 1991
Robert Service
Command and Control
Eric Schlosser
The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
Antony Beevor
The Romanovs: 1613-1918
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Replay: The History of Video Games
Richard Garriott and Tristan Donovan
Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer
Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet
Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
When Computing Got Personal: A History of the Desktop Computer
Matt Nicholson
Insanely Great: The Life and Time of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything
Steven Levy
The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission
Jim Bell
Infinity Beckoned: Adventuring Through the Inner Solar System, 1969-1989
Jay Gallentine
Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race
Margot Lee Shetterly
Atomic Awakening: A New Look At The History And Future Of Nuclear Power
James Mahaffey
Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner
Jonathan Glancey
Science and Technology
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
Cesar Hidalgo
Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
Steven Strogatz
The Technological Singularity
Murray Shanahan
Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault
John Dvorak
The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
Gretchen Bakke
The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
Nicholas Carr
Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
Brett King
Thinking Machines: The Inside Story of Artificial Intelligence and Our Race to Build the Future
Luke Dormehl
The Book of Satoshi: The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto
Phil Champagne
The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice and Application of the Next Internet Technology
Vitalik Buterin and William Mougayar
Bitcoin: The Future Of Money?
Dominic Frisby
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few
James Surowiecki
The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality & Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything
Shel Israel and Robert Scoble
Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins
Garry Kasparov
The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power
Joseph Turow
The Fintech Book – the Financial Technology Handbook for Investors, Entrepreneurs and Visionaries
Janos Barberis and Susanne Chishti
Literature
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen