Books that I read in 2016 – gideonpekun.com

I didn’t set a target for books that I want to read this year but taking inventory of the total number today shows that I did not do badly.

I categorise books into four groups; Non-Fiction, Fiction, IT Related and In Progress.

NON-FICTION:

Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard: I love history and most especially World War II, this book explains the Pacific Ocean Theater and the Atomic Bomb. Amazon and Goodreads review
Chaos Monkey by Antonio García Martínez: I learnt a lot about Silicon Valley, Facebook, Marketing and Advertisement from this book. Amazon and Goodreads review
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari: As a Christian, I don’t agree with most of what the writer says but mehn, this book has widened my knowledge of history. Amazon and Goodreads review
Disrupted by Daniel Lyons: Entertaining book on Start-Ups and the author’s experience working for one. Amazon and Goodreads review
Killing Patton by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard: I enjoy all Bill O’Reilly books and this is no exception. Amazon and Goodreads review
13 Hours by Mitchell Zuckoff: The true story of the Battle of Benghazi, I prefer the book to the movie. Amazon and Goodreads review
Lights Out by Ted Koppel: Fascinating and frightening book on what will happen to the power grid in the USA in the event of Cyber Attack. Amazon and Goodreads review
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg: Interesting book on the science of habits. Amazon and Goodreads review
When to Rob a Bank by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt: A curated collection of ideas or suggestions from the Freakonomics blog. Amazon and Goodreads review

FICTION:

Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham: Goodreads review
The Survivor by Vince Flynn: Goodreads review
The Black Widow by Daniel Silva: Goodreads review
The English Spy by Daniel Silva: Goodreads review
How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid: Goodreads review
The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr: A must read for anyone in IT. My favourite book for this year. Amazon and Goodreads review

IT RELATED:

Ansible: From Beginner to Pro by Michael Heap: I learnt how to create Ansible playbooks in my labs with this book. Amazon review
RHCSA/RHCE Red Hat Linux Certification Study Guide by Michael Jang: I read this book for my RHCSA, it is highly recommended for anyone that’s interested in either certification. I will definitely use it for my RHCE next year. Amazon review
Learning Proxmox VE by Rik Goldman: I switched from XenServer to Proxmox as my homelab hypervisor because of this book. PacktPub link
XenServer Administration Handbook by J.K. Benedict and Tim Mackey: I like Xenserver not only because it is free but also because it is robust and high scalable and can handle almost everything like Vsphere ESXi. I recommend this book for SysAdmins that want to manage XenServer in production. SafariBooksOnline
Docker for Sysadmins by Nigel Poulton: This book explained Docker and Containers to me in simple terms. Amazon review
Windows Server 2016 Cookbook by Jordan Krause: This book will be my reference for Windows Server 2016. Amazon and PacktPub
Building a Modern Data Center by Scott D. Lowe, David M. Davis & James Green: This is a must read for those interested in HyperConvergence and Software Defined Data Center. Amazon

IN PROGRESS:

These are books that I am still reading or that I have abandoned. Finishing a book is a herculean task for me because I am easily bored, distracted and constrained for the time by my other interests such as movies and video games. The books that I have abandoned this year are more than the ones that I completed. I am still interested in completing the five books below. ??