I came across a post on LinkedIn where the author said there was a lot of fluff in many software and business books, however some books were tiny and useful. People in the comments made a case that it could be good for tech books to be on the longer side. On more pages they could give more examples and you would become more familiar with the technology by reading about it for longer. Fair point!
What is a tiny book? Let’s say, it has to be under 150 pages and well-regarded. Here I’m biased because my own “Junior to Senior” is only 130 pages and the few reviews it has are good.
I think it’s a great idea to collect some of these in a list, and even better idea to try to get through all of them — because they are so short. Here they are:
(links are to my reviews if read, elsewhere if unread)
- “Tidy First?” by Kent Beck (122 pages)
- Booklets by Niels Malotaux (handful of pages each)
- “Residues: Time, Change, and Uncertainty in Software Architecture” by Barry O’Reilly
It’s a bit short, isn’t it? I checked several books that seemed short to me but they were way over 200 pages. However, I’ll be strict about keeping the list to a (completely arbitrary) limit of 150 pages.
Expect more books to be added.