Oh no, your review might have induced me to pick up another book! Sounds pretty enticing.
I find the various responses here interesting. Perhaps not surprising for an engineer-oriented readership, most are ‘tactical’ (that’s not quite the right description, but I need more coffee to come up with something better). I personally don’t have tactical issues ie. paper book vs ereader (both, depending) or how to stay undistracted (I tackled that years ago when first afflicted with rss-feeds semi-addiction), or social media (long-time refusenik) . It’s more a kind of philosophical issue. With all other book categories I have 2 modes (or more precisely a continuum with 2 poles): breadth vs depth. Some books I’ll read in armchair ‘breadth’ mode for general insight and background. Some I’ll ‘study’. Or I’ll approach the same book both ways.
I find both important, but for some reason I’m propelled almost involuntarily into depth/study mode with programming books.The time-consuming nature of that limits my range of familiarity more than I’d like (hence the unfinished pile ..). I’d like to try and at least read some of my slush pile this year without getting entirely captured by the quicksand of study mode.
