My Updated 2018 Reading List

(originally published July 6, 2018)

Reading has been a cornerstone of my software career & personal growth. In addition to the material benefits you get from consuming other people’s ideas, I find it hugely inspiring to read other ideas and serendipitously apply them to my own challenges.

For example, 10 years ago I was sitting in a doctor’s office while we were pregnant with our daughter. In this office I was reading a book on Inside SQL Server Query Tuning & Optimization. Data storage and retrieval was a professional interest of mine, and improving my knowledge on how to tackle this in SQL Server seemed like the gap to fill.

In the waiting room I was approached by someone else who had also read this book, Aidan Owens - founder of XiCast - one of the first live streaming video technology companies. Aidan and I worked on various projects together, shared similar life paths, and someone I consider a friend.

A few years later in another waiting room, I also disconnected long enough from my desk to solve long running systemic problems we had in the home insurance industry w/customer reporting. I remember specifically texting my director, Steve Holt (while we were both at QBR Insurance), with the idea to how we can tackle a specific issue the team was stuck on. We ended up testing + shipping the change that next month on a $500M portfolio of contracts.

Last year, Jenna Williams (wife extraordinaire), gifted me 12 books off my Amazon wish list and the agreement for time to read through a book a month. I accomplished most of them and wrote about it last month. My biggest takeaway from that time was to double-down on this exercise and improve my structure towards framing my ideas + future w/reading.

To do this I’m going to publish my 2018 reading list as a goal (yes, a few months late). I’ll do a debrief on this early next year on how I fared against each piece.

Note: this post contains links to each book I read on Amazon with a referral link

1. East of Eden

2. Practitioners Guide to Product Management

3. Shipping Greatness (Software)

4. Bad Paper

5. The Manager’s Path

   Guide for tech leaders - this book is often recommended by other leaders @ Google

6. Strategy of Pricing and Tactics

7. Valuation - Measuring & Managing the Value of Companies (McKinsey)

8. Managing the Professional Services Firm

9. On Success - Charlie Munger

   This book is a shorter version of an expanded title, “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, but this book is something I’ve considered picking up as a taster before reading the larger one.

10. High Growth Handbook

    Having to add this to the queue as many have praised Elad’s writing style and framing. I am already biased against liking this book because of the title and what I know about it (a collection of interviews), but I plan to read through this one anyways.

11. Venture Deals

    TBD - strong reviews, will see if it is worth recommending.

Notable gaps: where are all the decent texts on understanding the digital ad industry? This will be a large focus area for me outside of these printed texts this year. I will share as much as I learn here.

Other books I may get to:

• The Creature from Jekyll Island
• others books on amazon wish list

If you have any other book recommendations shoot me a msg on twitter (@reaganbwilliams) or email me. First name + last name @ gmail.

Written by Reagan Williams who lives and works in San Francisco at Google. You should follow him on Twitter