Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

I was an atheist long before the four horsemen arrived on the scene in the mid-2000s. Their writing did clarify my thinking and made me consider aspects that I’d not come across before. Like How to be a Liberal, it also gave me names for concepts that I had previously been aware of.

I probably could have put any of the Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens or Dennett [affiliate links] books in the list, but there’s something about Hitchens takes-no-prisoners writing that pipped the others to the post here. (I found Dennett’s a little disappointing, to be honest. Probably a good thing I never did philosophy at university.)

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

Sometimes confused with the also excellent Programming Pearls, Programming Perl [affiliate link] is quite different. It’s big and well written and well structured. But a lot of books meet those criteria, so in what sense did it have an impact on me?

It’s a technical book that proves that you don’t need to be dry and boring to get the message across. Being “professional” doesn’t mean being humourless.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

The rule is no reviews or justification, but I did for this book [affiliate link]. It’s such a recent one that it can’t possibly have influenced me, and that’s true. However, I included it because it gives a name to things that I’ve long believed or understood. It’s nice to realise you have a “belief system” rather than just a random collection of thoughts and opinions.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

I almost didn’t include this since I inadvertently created a new “one book per author” rule. (I did resist adding Dirk Gently.)

This book [affiliate link] is about Douglas Adams adventures visiting some of the most endangered creatures on the planet. Not the most endangered necessarily, but it includes a nice cross-section, including the cute and the scary.

This was Adams’ induction into nature conservations — something that he took seriously in later life — and you can feel his enthusiasm. The passion is (almost) catching.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

I have previously joked that if you could somehow combine Neal Stephenson and Douglas Coupland, you’d end up with a dense, well-researched, character driven story.

Over the years, Stephenson has got better at writing people and Coupland has added more plot. Just as I argue that Snow Crash was the sweet spot for Stephenson, I think that Microserfs is for Coupland. (Don’t @ me. That’s an opinion, not an objective truth.)

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

Many people in the computer industry don’t understand how we got here. Well, maybe not here. Due to the passage of time, it would be how we got to the mid-nineties.

This book [affiliate link] does not pretend to be objective or complete, but talks about both the technology and the people that got us from the invention of transistors to Windows PC. What I love about it is that it focuses on the people rather than the technology, yet still manages to put the technology into perspective. The writing is also very chatty and full of character. So much tech history is stodgy or dull or inaccurate. Empires is none of those things.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

At some point I realised I would never be a great programmer. It’s possible that point came when I read this book, where Bentley [affiliate link] iterates on a number of problems, gradually improving them. Maybe I couldn’t do what the author does, but it’s a fascinating, well written journey.

Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

William Boyd is a great novelist [affiliate link], and this is (possibly) my favourite of his. The impact it’s had on me, in a way, is that the main character is very much flawed. It’s good to be reminded that no one is perfect.

I’ve been following and participating in the twenty books in twenty days hashtag on Mastodon. It’s described as follows:

20 books that have had an impact on who you are. One book a day for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just book covers.

I’m going to cheat. I am going to explain my choices. The posts that follow are all part of the challenge. As with my annual reading lists, these are not reviews per se, more notes, observations or thoughts that occur to me as I read them.

For a while, this book [affiliate link] was everywhere. It was recommended on podcasts. Every second person on the Tube was reading it. Friends suggested I take a look.

In the end, I added it to my queue at the library but its popularity meant that I had to wait six months for it to become available!

For various reasons, I wasn’t able to read it in the three weeks loan period. I could have waited another six months to read the end, but I was invested enough to buy a copy.