Are these worth a read?.

Question

Can someone tell me whether the below mentioned books are worth the read.

1. Catastrophe Disentanglement
2. Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management
3. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
4. Beautiful Code Edited by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson (O'Reilly Media)
5. Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk by Paul Duvall,Steve Matyas, Andrew Glover (Addison-Wesley Professional)
6. Prefactoring - Ken Pugh (O'Reilly & Associates)
7. The Art of Project Management - Scott Berkun (O'Reilly & Associates)

Thanks.

Answer 1

All but one are available and reviewed on Amazon.

Answer 2

Some guy called Joel Spolsky :-) has updated his book list for 2009.

The list is here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html

From the podcast I think his faves are:

• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
• Code Complete
• Don't Make Me Think

Answer 3

I can only say that I did not enjoy Beautiful Code at all. Aside from being a collection of essays, most of the authors don't talk about the beauty of the code: pages and pages of discussion of a certain piece of code which authors consider beautiful. It's very easy to conclude after the reading that not only the concept of "beautiful code" is erroneous, but there is definitely no agreement between software practitioners regarding it. (Oh, and I don't like being tricked into supporting charities either).

Answer 4

Look at Amazon for more comprehensive ratings, but I've read most of these. Bonus! I'll give you my snapshot ratings here too in haiku form.

• Manage It! -- Find out what works best / for your group. Choices abound! / Solid work; B-plus.

• Pragmatic Thinking and Learning -- Level up your brain! / Very superlative read. / Add to shelf. Solid A.

• Beautiful Code -- It seems beautiful's / a highly subjective word. / Not recommended.

• Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk -- Not doing CI? / Your project may soon be on / Daily WTF.

• Prefactoring -- Conversational / to the point of annoyance. / Not recommended.

• The Art of Project Management -- Experienced voice / offers much-needed wisdom. / Buy! A solid read.