The votes are in! Our first book will be...
The votes are in, folks. We had a lot of really great suggestions but, at the end of the day, one book won by a landslide. So (drumroll please), without further ado, I'm happy to announce the first book to be read for the IH Book Club:
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick AKA @robfitz
Here's the plan. We've got six weeks to read this book. So, grab a highlighter, sit down in your favorite chair, and crack open The Mom Test. We'll be here, doing the same — and we'll start some discussion threads along the way so don't be shy.
Then, in the last week of September, once everyone has finished the book, we'll have some really in-depth discussions. And after that, we'll wrap up in a very cool but currently TBD way, and get a vote going for October's book. Cool?
Annnd... go 🚀
Neat :). If you have any questions, or if you want the book but can't afford it, just shoot me a note (rob@robfitz.com) and I'll try to sort you out.
This is awesome -- we do a software engineering book club at work and I've been trying to push for something like this as well.
Interesting! Can you tell me what your last books where and what your format of the book club was (reading together and discuss every week, summarising and suggesting books, ...)?
We have only read one book so far ("Clean Code", but Robert C. Martin) and met mostly every week, reading about 30pgs a time (2 chapters). I always asked an opening question and then we more or less summarized things of note, talked about what we could incorporate into our codebase/what might be more difficult, and general theme of the work. For "Clean Code", a lot of the discussion centered on how readability and maintenance were central to reasons for writing code in a certain way.
We're figuring out what to read next. Maybe "Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems", but there are a few other books that I don't recall right now, which other people have suggested.
Overall I was pleased with how many people came (it was over lunch and food was not provided -- so I was really fighting against engineer self-interest to steal that time from people), and how it helped nudge us toward a unified way of thinking about engineering.
I'll let you know what the next book ends up being
Hey SimplySteve, thanks for that elaborate answer, I really appreciate this!
I'd like to try something like this too and checking out other formats, too. Clean Code I now put on my want-to-read list. Thanks for that recommendation, too!
Excited!
Got it in the mail a few weeks ago, excited to finally start it!
Just got the book!
Really looking forward to this 🙌🏽📚
Awesome!! Getting the book tomorrow!
I'm stoked for this! Looking forward to being a part of this book club!
Bought and started reading. I love it that, as opposed to other books of the genre, right off the bat you receive actionable information. Great read so far!
interesting. will jump on it
Meaning, there won't be any discussions/questions raised until the last week of September where everyone finishes the book and gathers to discuss?
If you have questions before then which I can be useful for, I tend to be fairly available, either here on IH or at rob@robfitz.com
We'll have discussions related to the book every week — we're just saving the most in-depth topics for later, once everyone has read it.