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I liked the idea of the book form the first time I've seen the title and fortunately, it lives up to my expectations. It's not perfect, but it rekindled my curiosity towards math and algorithms. Bringing them to everyday problems makes them much more interesting. The only thing that I'm missing in the book is the application of algorithms in business settings. For example, when I mentioned this book Mateusz K he has sent me a  blog post of  Pieter Hintjens: Amdahl to Zipf: Ten Laws of the Physics of People . For example,  Amdahl's Law  mathematically proves the argument from  The Mythical Man-Month  that you can't just add new people to the project to deliver it faster because of the cost of synchronization. I want this post to be a reminder for myself of the most interesting ideas in the book so if you want to savor it yourself just remember that it's worth buying. Rating: 9/10 Contents: 1. Optimal Stopping Probably the most ...

The book that I wanted to read for a long time. How was it? I have to say that it's really good. I learned a lot about Id and both John Carmack and John Romero - how their lives looked up before and during the creation of the most know Id Games like Doom or Quake. What was depressing but also making it so much more real is how much politics and infighting happened between all those people working in the industry at that time. The only downside for me is that there's not much about the technology side of things. There is a paragraph here and there but most of the book is about two John's allowing you to take a look inside their heads. Maybe another downside as not native speaker would be the font - that made it harder than necessary to read. All in all, I highly recommend it. 8/10

I have started reading this book in December of 2013 when it was still in progress. Probably I have stumbled upon it somewhere on  GameDev.js Facebook Group  but I cannot really remember how I found it, but important point is that this time I have read it from cover to cover all over again to feel the difference with finished book. The good thing about this book is that it is available both on paper and for free if you want to read it online. Just go to  http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ . I really liked the book and the hand drawn illustrations that really help understand the ideas. Best thing is that the author tries to emphasize how dangerous those patterns can be and many times warns the reader to do not use them if not needed. In my opinion having a list of downsides and pros of each pattern in one place that you can easily check in the browser, is really handy. I have no idea if I am ever going to use any of them but having understanding of the underly...

I have read only about 60% of the book. Some ideas were interesting but for me they were buried in elaborate and boring description of the model author is using. I would not recommend it to a friend. I really miss anything I could learn from the book and use in real life. The best ideas in the book are described elsewhere in a better way so there is nothing interesting. Pick something else. Rating 1/10 If you still want to buy and want to read in Polish then you can find it as Narysuj swoje myśli. Jak skutecznie prezentować i sprzedawać pomysły na kartce papieru.

I heard about this book so many times that I decided that there has to be something profound about it. Turns out it is a really good book that enables us to see ourselves in the bigger perspective of the universe. I found it funny and entertaining. It is a chaotic but remembering that it was written in 1979 then many ideas were into our everyday life. Many of names and ideas were inspired by the book for example Babble Fish and Deep Though. At least it is good to know where those come from. Rating: 8/10

Second book from the Sword of Truth series. If you are interested in the review of the first book then you can find it here:  Wizard's First Rule . I had to stay up for 24 hours, but I found it pretty exhausting. The trick I used is instead of reading technical or business books I have picked second book of the series I know would be gripping and interesting. I have even found a second book better than the first one (but I admit that I may have get used to the style of the author). For sure it worked to keep me up, it was even working when I should go to sleep. It really was interesting. Author style of writing and the fact that he tries to be friendly to new readers is sometimes annoying, especially when you think how much it adds to the book length, but there have to be some downsides. Rating: 8/10

I wanted to read something outside of my comfort zone. As I try to learn English and I am writing blog posts in English it seemed like a good idea to read something about writing. My choice of a book was more accidental than deliberate, but I am pretty happy with what I have learned. Of course, it did not make me a writer in a couple of hours. I have gained some insight into writing, practical use of grammar and structure of stories that was interesting just in itself, but there were also some more general ideas included. How to think about writing, how to deal with critics and knowing your colleagues and they craft (like photojournalism and design) can be applied to any craft you do. Writing big books, should be divided into chapters, parts, that you can think about - something that fits in your head. It is much too easy to be overwhelmed by a 300 pages you have to write. Divide those into smaller parts. When you write the first version, you should lower your standards. Tr...

Short but pretty nice book about Go language. It was recommended to me and I am really glad that I read it. It is much easier to follow than GoTour and in my opinion sets up much friendlier learning curve. Book is available for free online  and on Amazon. I have learned most in part 9 about Structs and Interfaces. Really interesting is chapter 13 about the Core Packages so I can recommend those two if you already know the basics of the language but want to see more practical usage. Rating 8/10 (just keep in mind that it is an introductory book)

One idea from Creativity Inc.  was with me most of the time I was reading Mastery. Notice advices that are general and make sense the moment you hear them. There is a good chance that they are useless. I have also heard a term TBU which means True, But Useless that is connected somehow to being more critical about general ideas and advices. In my opinion, there is a reason why I was thinking about them so much while reading. Stories of master are really interesting and most of them are inspiring but advises that you get sound good but it is really hard to decide what to do with them. Book is strongly influenced by 10k hours of deliberate practice rule, but I am not so sure if it really is true. There is an interesting article that can give you more context how this 10k hours rule is just average and you can learn things faster or longer  http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practic...

Book about Pixar. Whole history of the company and Ed Catmull president of Pixar. Book is really good and it gets better after about 60% (I read it on Kindle). The Book is about creativity and sustaining creative culture in the company. One of the most interesting things for me were that an author tells a lot how creativity is filling blank pages, creating completely new things while his most creative people DO NOT use this model. Most of them have the idea of discovery something that was waiting for them. Even author reminds himself that what works is more important than what he thinks but still he really struggles with this idea. Really inspiring part of the book cover culture of Pixar and of Disney Animation. It was great to read about culture of motivated and happy people of Pixar. In my opinion, this book is a must read for all managers of all levels. Culture of a company is not something that you can create and forget about, you have to think about it all the time. For me, ...

Really nice a short for a Sanderson book in the universe of Mistborn series after 300 years. Plot was interesting and I liked the characters. In comparison to other Sanderson books I did not though all the time how those characters were stupid as was often the case in other books. Rating: 8/10

The third and final book of the Mistborn series. Unfortunately I think the first part of the book was not really important and too much similar to the last book. The good thing is that the action was more dynamic with every page so at the end it was really fun. I must admit that the end was unexpected, at least for me. Overall it is a great book. Rating: 8/10

Book by Joel Bakan is on the list of Bret Victor recommended books  so some time ago I put it on my read later list. My colleague bought one recently so I was eager to borrow it. I think that book could be better, especially shorter as chapters 3 and 4 were not so great. Fortunately I think that I learned a lot about history of corporations. Now I know how they are financed and how they work. The book is a couple of years old so it is interesting to see how corporations evolved from that time. A couple of months ago I have read interesting article about Tim Cook plans for Apple  http://gadgets.ndtv.com/others/news/angry-tim-cook-tells-apple-investor-to-get-out-of-this-stock-489936 . Back then I had no idea what that meant. Now I have much bigger context to think about it, I would say that alone makes up for the small flaws of the book. Must read for everyone working for any kind of corporation. Rating: 7/10

Second book from the Mistborn series. It is better than the first one for sure. I am really eager to start the third one as soon as possible :) Book is gripping. I had a big problem doing anything else while reading it. Maybe before starting the third book I should finish "Corporation". Rating: 9/10

First book of the series with the same title. Really good fantasy, more dynamic than The Words of Radiance  and maybe a little less epic in scale of the world but still impressive and gripping. Magic reminded me of the one in The Stormlight Archive series, do not get me wrong I see similarities but it is also much more complicated. I really like reading about magic in fantasy so learning more about magic of Mistborn was great. Fortunately at the end we can see a glimpse of new threat so I hope to read second book soon. Rating: 8/10

Authors themselves described this book as translated to Polish and more focused on practice version of Impro by Keith Johnstone. I do not think there is much worth in reviewing it beside simple rating, so I will try to make this post more about improvisation so that you can pick a book in your favourite language. Most important three things from the book about impro are: Taking Offers, Not Blocking and Being Aware of Status. Taking Offers - Like in "Yes Man", taking offers sacrifices safety of habits and everyday life for a chance of more exciting things to do. Not Blocking - Connected to the first one, but more about noticing many ways in which we are blocking offers, like joking - those are not so obvious to notice but still are 'blocks'. Status - Status Games and Status started to be something that I am fascinates me. It explains so many of my irrational behaviours... Of course I missed most of the book as I do not really practiced much. Still book is ...

This book spent a year on my desk. It had been recommended by two of my friends by it was intimidating enough to always find something more important or fun to read. 4 days ago I have decided to finally get rid of it from my desk :) Turns out, most of the things that were interesting I have already knew from  M101JS: MongoDB for Node.js Developers . I mean 'sharding' and 'replication' are the most fundamental knowledge about all databases so it was worth to read about them again, but still, nothing new. Fortunately there were also new ideas. First, CAP Theorem that was nicely explained and I finally understood the importance of setting how many clusters need to acknowledge the reads and writes. Second good thing was reading more about Map-Reduce in context of clustered databases. Book is really short and is much easier to read than you might think. Rating: 7/10 If you want to read in Polish:  NoSQL. Kompendium wiedzy

Really nice book about remote work. It will help you talk to your manager why remote work is a good idea. You can even give this book to your manager. Book is nicely divided into sections of 1-2 pages that can be read in a minute when you waiting for a remote build to finish or colleague to answer your email. I felt a boost in productivity when I could at the same time read and work. Book itself is nicely written and sums experiences of 37signals connected with remote work. It is not only about fancy things so you can learn when it might not work as well. Fun and easy to read but sometimes I felt it is a bit too shallow. Still, if you know nothing about remote work it will make great introduction. Rating: 6/10 If you want to read in Polish:  REMOTE. Pracuj zdalnie, biuro jest zbędne

I am back to reading fantasy. When I read to much of fantasy I feel like I waste time, but if I do not read it for a long time I tend to be much more pessimistic. I assume that I have a good excuse then to read fantasy from time to time, so time for a short review of my last 40 hours. It is a second book of The Stormlight Archive series. I really liked The Way of Kings so I have really high expectations. Fortunately the book is great! I really feel like after a really long journey, it was extremely hard to stop reading. That alone justifies my high rating. Downsides: some of the stories for me at least were not so interesting, or maybe it was just annoying to not read about main story. Hard to say. For that I will take half a point. That is all. If you are interested it is best to just read it for yourself. Rating: 9.5/10 Really good fantasy.

Really good book for startups and designers of everyday applications and services. Nir Eyal created model for creating habitual use of your service: Trigger (first external, then internal) Action (make sure it is easy to do) Variable Reward (just like in casino) Investment (ask user to make your service better for him) Model is pretty easy and you can map it to our everyday activities. Email, Facebook, Twitter all of those are using this model. Of course every website has its own value so every one of them manifests those steps differently. Book is pretty short and to my surprise I really liked two last chapters. One about morality of using such techniques and second one about startups.  One of great quotes from this chapter is Paul Graham: Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" From Want to start a startup?  Overall: 6/10 This rating for me is a bit lower than wh...