2017: The Year In Books

With another year coming to an end, it is time to take a look back at the 28 books I read over the past year, 3 less than last year.  Of those 28, 7 were non-fiction and, of the 21 novels, only 4 were TV show tie-ins.  For the first time, none of the books came out of my “to-read” drawer, and a record 16 were e-books.  I read over 80,000 pages, my lowest total since at least 2013.

Once again, a majority of the books I read this year were by authors I’ve never read before. The 15 authors that I read for the first this year were:
Amy Schumer
Jessie Humphries
Gene Kim
Tod Goldberg
Matt Zoller Seitz
Philip K. Dick
Harland Sanders
Paul Levine
William J. Mann
Matthew V. Clemmons
Chris Smith
Riley Sager
Whitney Cummings
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tom Perrotta

There were 4 authors I read multiple titles from during 2016, the ghost writer for Richard Castle, Jeffery Deaver, David Mack, and Erle Stanley Gardner.

7 of the books I read were released this year, while 3 of them were released last century.

Finally, the breakdown by month.  Vacation in December certainly helped pad its totals a tad bit.

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Book 5 (of 52) – The Phoenix Project

The Phoenix Project – Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, & George Spafford

When Bill Palmer is unexpectedly promoted to vice president of IT Operations at Parts Unlimited, he inherits an organization that is underperforming and in danger of being outsourced.  With the help of an enigmatic potential board member, Bill starts to see a new way to run his organization, using agile and DevOps to save the day.

2011 was the last time I read a “business” book, but my senior manager kept harping on this one and, during an agile training session, I broke down and ordered the book.  Written as a novel, the book details how implementing these strategies improve performance and help make IT an integral part of any enterprise.  It paints a rosy picture, while ignoring any difficulties that may be experienced while switching to these new paradigms.