As part of my New Year’s Resolutions I have decided to read 30 books this year. I know, that’s like 2.5 books a month! The idea came to me when I looked at my programming library (currently at a measly 73 books) and realized that I had read few of them.

I’m the type that will buy a book, read the half I need for the project I’m on and move to the next book. Few books seem exciting enough to actually finish. So I was looking at this wall of books over the holiday break to find where I could get rid of some and thin out some books. Too hard! How can I get rid of them???? They’re full of great knowledge! Wait, how would I know that? I never read the whole thing!

So as it stands, I may be reading 30 books, but it’s more like finishing 30 books. And as the title states, I have finished book one: Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide, 2nd Edition. The “Pickaxe” as it is commonly referred to was a great book to read. I liked it so much, I went looking for books from the same authors. I found The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master and jumped into it. I also have the problem of reading multiple books at the same time, so I’m also reading Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition, Professional .NET 2.0 Generics, and Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition. They all seem so good so far, but I’ll keep you posted.