I’m not sure how many years are necessary to call something annual, but three are probably enough. So here’s my annual list of books I read in 2011. I typed “this year” first. Obviously celebrating new year is not enough for my mind to completely switch and I’ll probably be in danger of writing 2011 where I shouldn’t for another fortnight or so.

This year I stopped striving to read a certain number of books and I’m happier for it. Looking at the list I am mostly happy with my choice of fiction and seriously question my choice of books related to my career. It’s not that books themselves would be that bad (most weren’t), but why on earth did I spent so much time reading things tangentially related to what I do?

I linked every book I liked and bolded those I heartily recommend. To safeguard from my tweaking of this blog’s theme, here are recommended spelled out: Eating Animals, Herztier, Skylight and The Unfolding of Language . I also want to specifically mention Copper and Atlas of Remote Islands both great in their own way which are not bolded but maybe they should be.

Last year’s disclaimer is also still valid. Most links point to Amazon and include my affiliate ID meaning if you buy them after following these links, I get few cents that might eventually lead to purchase of another book. It was easier to copy this paragraph than fix my scripts that generate links to books, but I should probably do later. I promise to fix it for next year’s list, especially since I’ve never earned enough to buy even one book.

Without further ado here is the list:

1. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer . Great book that you should read even if you have no plans to become a vegetarian (or vegan).
2. The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece by Eric Siblin. Who knew there is such a fascinating story behind cello suites and Eric tells it very well.
3. Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke. I wish I didn’t have to read word hardboiled so many times, but otherwise a must-own book for every web front-end developer.
4. The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany. I read this at the end of January, when Egypt was engulfed in protests against regime and it provided an excellent background to why protests were happening. A truly captivating look at modern Egypt society.
5. Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather by Gao Xingjian. Six beautiful vignettes.
6. Epitaph for a Spy by Eric Ambler. I don’t read many mystery books, but I read this one with pleasure. It aged remarkably well.
7. Introducing HTML5 by Bruce Lawson, Remy Sharp. A good, hands-on introduction to HTML5 and related technologies that occasionally forgets to mention browser support and is already somewhat out of date. Luckily second edition is out (or should be soon).
8. Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky. A beautiful book. A delightful way to spend a day reading about mostly unknown islands.
9. HTML5: Up and Running by Mark Pilgrim. I read this one almost back to back with Introducing HTML5 and there is surprisingly little overlap between them. It can feel too geeky and repetitive in places, but it has best treatment of data-* I’ve seen so far.
10. Life Nomadic by Tynan. A book of anecdotes and lots of practical advices aimed at digital nomads, which has surprisingly large amount of useful tips for us who don’t travel as light or for as long.
11. Herztier by Herta Mueller . Without a doubt one of the best books I read in years and also one of the most heart wrenching. Literature at its best.
12. Skylight by David Hare . Great drama with amazing amount of substance. Probably not for you if you are politically right (wrong) leaning.
13. The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane. Good overview which confirmed it’s not a problem I’d have. Or career I’d choose.
14. EffectiveUI by EffectiveUI. Overview with some concrete propositions written for audience that doesn’t include me.
15. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know by Kevlin Henney. Mostly uncontroversial and insightful often enough to be worth at least a quick browse.
16. 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know by Richard Monson-Haefel. Kind of like the previous one, only for software architects.
17. Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun. A fun book with lots of good tips which still can’t make you a good speaker without practice.
18. Think Stats by Allen B. Downey. I read this book too soon, before it was published. Content was promising, but code was sloppy and buggy. Most useful to (Python) programmers who want to learn basic statistics.
19. Dry Side Up by Martin Ony. I know Martin so I may be biased, but I also don’t like travel literature. This is the book I would get if I wanted to know how it FEELS like to raft through Grand Canyon. Fun to read even if you don’t have such plans.
20. Snuff by Terry Pratchett. Felt a bit sentimental and certainly not among his best, but I nevertheless enjoyed it as I’m sure most fans will.
21. The Chains of Heaven: An Ethiopian Romance by Philip Marsden. Interesting, insightful, fluid, but still travel literature. I liked it as much as I can like travel literature.
22. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. A rather uneven book that doesn’t quite live up to praise it received. Sometimes brilliant, often not, but almost always tragic.
23. Copper by Kazu Kibuishi. A melancholic comic about a boy and his dog that fits my temperament perfectly. Most, but not all, cartoons can be found on web, yet book is still worth buying.
24. The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher . Fascinating and well-written book about how human languages did and might have developed. Can’t recommend highly enough.
25. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang. A must read for free-market proponents and less so for well-read people. It contains some surprising information for everyone and is easy to read. I wish though there were more links to data in notes.

This year I plan to finish a few tomes I already started but for one reason or another put off. I find I read too much from “Anglo-Saxon” authors so I want to read even more books from, at least to me, less known places and cultures. Also more directly work-related books would be great too. Any recommendations of books you liked are most welcome.

Related articles

• Books I read in 2010 (markos.gaivo.net)
• Books I read in 2009 (markos.gaivo.net)

It’s hard to judge importance of events as they are unfolding or soon afterwards, but 2011 feels in many ways like a historical year and I will be amazed if it doesn’t prove to be such. Arab spring and unresolved eurozone crisis alone practically guarantee that this will be a year to remember although it’s too soon to say in what light. There are definitely plenty of good reasons to worry, but there always are.

This year was also a year of big personal changes. I left Zemanta in summer and went on sabbatical. Leaving a company in  the middle of economic crisis doesn’t sound like a prudent idea, but I’ve yet to regret it. I started contributing open source before I left, but having more time certainly helped me do more of it and with a bit of luck I may even finish first version of my web Instapaper client before this year runs out.

I built Supervizor with Primož, which is a project I am most proud of. We haven’t done everything we set to do yet and we unlikely will this year, but I hope that in early 2012 Supervizor’s data will become easily accessible.

There were lots of experiments on myself. Having a list of possible (and finished) projects on wall feels liberating. Counting books I read doesn’t work , but digital sabbath is great. I left Twitter for better use of my time, but it’s really too soon to tell. I  learned and did a lot, more than I expected, but as always less than I hoped. Somewhat unintentionally we reduced our carbon footprint further even though we traveled a lot.

I also finally found time to really reflect on what I want to do and my personal research agenda is getting more of a shape. I want to work most on use of open data to improve civic engagement and exploring social software for introverts .

So what will 2012 bring?

Nobody really knows, but this year it became clear to me that I want my work to be more socially engaged and I am thrilled I got an opportunity to join amazing people at Aptivate for I hope a long time. I’ll continue to work on a so far semi-public open data project which I am sure will become public soon. I plan to read lots of books, but start less than two new projects. I am sure I won’t finish everything I set to do, but that’s alright. We always overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in ten so I  just need to keep going.

And surely I will continue to worry. There are only more reasons to despair over environment and eurozone of today might not be around this time next year. However we are not pilling on canned food yet so optimist in me obviously hasn’t completely died yet.

But first I will enjoy holidays. I hope you will too and I wish you a happy new year.

I’ve been fiddling with my website again, changing theme switching from somewhat dumb class based system to a more proper one using alternate style sheets. I learned that picking a style sheet in browser applies those changes only to currently open page, so for style sheet selection to persevere it needs a bit of Javascript support from website owner. Personally I find this just stupid.

The easiest way to remember visitor’s preference is to store it in his browser. Cookies used to be popular before they were deemed evil, but they have other limitations as well. Hence popular switch to HTML5 in-browser storage technologies like localStorage .

I think there is one important difference between cookies and tools like localStorage that is often overlooked and it’s not the size of data that can be stored. Cookies are sent with each page request while data stored elsewhere isn’t. Changing them on any side will automatically share state with the other. I use localStorage in my theme switcher because I think server doesn’t need and should not know which theme is used. But for storing shared data, especially one that expires, cookies remain a reasonable if not best choice.

None of this is exactly new, but I think it is worth remembering. In other news I dislike interface limitations of Chrome more and more (exceptions are Developer Tools and extensions framework).