Guus Bosman

software engineering director


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Here I keep track of some of the books that I've read, often with a short review and some personal thoughts. These are only a selection since I read a lot more books for work.

I like to read book in their original languages where possible: French, German, Dutch, English and I even read three books in Bulgarian. Here is the list of books I'd like to read. See also books about technology or management, and my all-time favorite books.

I'm an engineer, and enjoy science fiction novels. Some of my favorite authors are Vernor Vinge, Terry Pratchett and LE Modesitt Jr. No overview of my reading habits would be complete without mentioning The Economist -- I love that magazine.

Books below are in order of date read; this overview starts in October 2002.


The Constitution of the United States

The book describes the history and origins of the US Constitution, and contains the most important decisions of the Supreme Court. It contains the literal text of the Constitution and its Amendments and the Declaration of Independence. It also has a lot of information about the juridical system in the States. A very interesting book, which is written as a text-book for American college students. Bought it in the American Bookstore in Amsterdam.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/constitution.jpg
English

The Collapse of Chaos

After "The Science of Discworld" I got really interested in the work of Cohen and Stewart. Terry Pratchett's work has no secrets anymore. I went to the library and I found the The Collapse of Chaos (in a Dutch translation).

It certainly didn't disappoint me! A very interesting book on science, its history and its philosophy.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/chaos.jpg
Dutch

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

Every now and then I order a book to study through my work at Chess. The title of this book is quite ambitious, and it had a good review on Slashdot, so I decided to try it. Unfortunately it was not as good as the cover looks. The books is well-written, but contains hardly anything new. Most of it is just basic computer science, or can be found in older books on J2EE patterns.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/patternsfowler.jpg
English for work

Don't make me think

A well-written book by Steve Krug on the design and usability of websites. It touches the surface of the field, but doesn't go very deep. Still, it was refreshing to look with different eyes to websites, and I've learned some stuff to apply to my own website.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/dontmakemethink.jpg
English for work

The Science of Diskworld

Borrowed this wonderful book of my father. It's a popular scientific book on the history of the universe and the world. With these authors it's no surprise that it is extremely well-written.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/sciencediskworld.jpg
English

Programming Jakarta Struts & Struts in Action

For my work I have been reading 2 books about Struts, a web-development framework. Our project is the first one inside Chess to use this framework, but it is so valuable we'll probably use it on next projects as well.

Struts in Action was the best one, Programming Jakarta Struts was a bit superficial.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/struts.jpg
English

Elementaire Economie

Elementary Economics, a book for high-school students. Was good to refresh my knowledge of the field a bit.

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Dutch

Macht, recht en markt

A description of the history of international cooperation (or the lack thereof) in the fields of security, economic policy, social policies and military alliances. It's written in a bit boring style unfortunately. The author is clearly not in favor of the United States' policy on a lot of things; but that's perhaps not surprising given the fact that he works for the Parool, a traditionally left-wing newspaper.

The description of the development of international law and of the United Nations was interesting.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/machtrechtenmarkt.jpg
Dutch

Niet-stemmers

A survey of non-voters, by the Sociaal Cultureel Planburo. It describes backgrounds, motivations not to go voting, etc.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/nietstemmers.jpg
Dutch

Een schaap in wolfskleren

A book by Rick van der Ploeg, economist and ex-minister of Cultural Affairs. It's very interesting and well written that gives insight in the trade-offs politicians have to make between effectiveness and fairness of policies.

As Labour politician he is in favour of a society based on solidarity, as an economist he is in favour of free markets and (economical) liberalism. I liked it a lot to read about how he deals with these two goals.

http://www.guusbosman.nl/images/books/schaapinwolfskleren.jpg
Dutch

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