Solving my Tsundoku: The Return of TESTHEAD Book Reviews

As I was settling in and preparing for my journey home from Ireland (which will include a flight from Dublin to Toronto (roughly eight hours), plus a seven hour layover, and then a flight from Toronto to San Francisco (roughly another seven hours), I figured it was a great time to dig in and work through some of the books I have received to review, as well as some I have picked up to work with due to the work that I do as a tester and occasional programmer.

I receive a number of e-books in PDF format from a variety of sources. Some are offered to me free for me to review, many more are purchased by me to work through and bulk up my geek brain (well, that was the goal in any event). At some point, the desire to read and apply got overtaken by the real life aspects of work, family, testing initiatives and other things I do. All the while, my book pile keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Zeger van Hese gave a great keynote talk at EuroSTAR this week, and in the process, he talked a bit about those great linguistic terms that English doesn't have a succinct single word for. One example that resonated with me (to the point of causing physical discomfort, to be honest) was the Japanese word "Tsundoku" (積ん読, (hiragana つんどく) which is, according to Wiktionary "(informal) the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other such unread books".

The first way to deal with a problem is to realize you have a problem, and to that end, I have decided I am going to do something about that problem. How so? By making one of my "bold boasts" I make from time to time. Since we are still a few weeks before New Years, I cannot be accused of making a New Year's Resolution (since I don't make them ;) ), but I can declare a new goal, and that new goal is that I shall henceforth and forthwith start whittling down my book collection and actually read, apply and review the stack of books that I have. To that end, you may expect, in no particular order, reviews to start appearing for the following:

1. Accessibility Handbook
2. Apache JMeter
3. Application Testing with Capybara
4. Backbone.js Cookbook
5. Beginning PHP 6 Apache MySQL 6 Web Development
6. Build Your Own Web Site
7. Computer Science Programming Basics in Ruby
8. Confident Ruby
9. Crackproof Your Software
10. Design Accessible Web Sites
11. Design Driven Testing
12. Eloquent JavaScript, 2nd Edition
13. Everyday Scripting with Ruby
14. Exceptional Ruby
15. Good Math
16. Head First Ajax
17. Head First HTML and CSS
18. Head First HTML5 Programming
19. Head First JavaScript
20. Head First JavaScript Programming
21. Head First Mobile Web
22. Head First PHP and MySQL
23. Head First SQL
24. Head First jQuery
25. Higher Order Perl
26. How Linux Works
27. Jasmine JavaScript Testing
28. JavaScript for Kids
29. JavaScript Security
30. JavaScript Testing Beginner's Guide
31. JavaScript and JSON Essentials
32. JMeter Cookbook
33. jQuery Cookbook
34. Kali Linux Network Scanning Cookbook
35. Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things
36. Learning JavaScript Data Structures and Algorithms
37. Learning Metasploit Exploitation and Development
38. Learning Python Testing
39. Manga Guide to Calculus
40. Manga Guide to Electricity
41. Manga Guide to Physics
42. Manga Guide to Statistics
43. Mastering Regular Expressions
44. Metaprogramming Ruby
45. Metasploit Penetration Testing Cookbook
46. Metasploit The Penetration Testers Guide
47. Modern Perl
48. More Agile Testing
49. NGUI for Unity
50. PHP MySQL JavaScript HTML5 All in One for Dummies
51. Pride and Paradev
52. Pro HTML5 Accessibility
53. Python for Kids
54. Rails Crash Course
55. Regular Expressions Cookbook
56. Responsive Web Design By Example
57. Robot Framework Test Automation
58. Ruby Wizardry
59. Running Lean
60. Selenium Design Patterns and Best Practices
61. Selenium WebDriver Practical Guide
62. Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make With Your Kids
63. Specification by Example
64. Test Driven Web Development with Python
65. TestComplete Cookbook
66. TestComplete Made Easier
67. The Art of Application Performance Testing
68. The Art of Software Testing, 3rd Edition
69. The Selenium Guidebook
70. The Well Grounded Rubyist
71. Web Development with Django Cookbook
72. Web Penetration Testing with Kali Linux
73. Webbots Spiders and Screen Scrapers 2nd edition
74. Wicked Cool PHP
75. Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts
76. Wireshark Essentials
77. Zero to One

Yes, this is a line in the sand. Yes, I intend to fix this problem of mine. No, I cannot say which order these reviews will appear, but be sure, they are coming. Yes, I encourage you all to call me on it if I slack off.

One way or another, this begins today, and it will not finish until all of the stack is read, worked and commented on. That may take awhile ;).