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The following paragraphs are a cross-post of a computer book review I wrote for Amazon. For those of you who have no interest in computer programming books, I recommend not reading the following paragraphs, or else you might slip into a coma due to boredom.

I had high expectations of “Design Patterns In C#” by Steven John Metsker but unfortunately the book didn’t live up to them. This book is part of the “Software Patterns Series” of books that was started off by the classic “Design Patterns” by “The Gang of Four”(GoF), as they are known. That book is amazing and should be part of every software developer’s library.

Metsker’s book assumes the reader has studied the GoF book and is knowledgeable in the basic 23 design patterns covered in it. Therefore, this book is intended to be a supplement to the original classic, expanding on it to show implementations in C# and leaving the in-depth rational of the design patterns to be described in the original. I feel like this was the correct approach to take because the original masterpiece does such a good job at introducing the subject of design patterns and giving the reader a solid foundation.

My main complaint about “Design Patterns In C#” is the “challenges” this book includes throughout the text. I have no problem with exercises for the reader to try but the way this book presents them makes the actual text useless as a reference.

In many chapters, the major UML diagram and/or coding example showing how to implement a given design pattern is left with missing parts for the reader to fill in. This book’s audience is experienced developers, who are looking for the author’s opinion on the proper ways to implement a given design pattern using all the features of C#. Because of the “challenges” sections, the author is leaving out the exact parts of the book the developer needs. It is very frustrating to have to consult an appendix every couple of pages before making sense of the text following a “challenge”. This book should have left out the “challenges” and instead imitated the original “Design Patterns” book by becoming a no nonsense reference for software architects.

My other, smaller, complaint about this book is that it uses one large source code base for its examples instead of giving the reader a separate, small example for every pattern. If the author had chosen to use a small example for each chapter then they would have remained more independent of each other and easier to use as a reference. But, as I covered above, the author pretty much killed any chance of this book being a useful reference.

This book wasn’t all bad. The author did do a good job of showing which specific features of the C# language, such as interfaces, applied well to the various design patterns and made their implementations cleaner. I also liked that the author used UML instead of the older OMT used by the GoF book. To be fair to the original book, UML was not standardized at the time of its writing. Overall, I would recommend against purchasing “Design Patterns In C#” because of its “challenges” sections.

I just received $85 worth of books from Amazon (cover price $140… gotta love Amazon discounts) that are suppose to teach me how to trading stocks using “technical analysis”. Hopefully, they will work and I will make a lot of money. The books are very thick so it will probably take me a while to digest. It is my hope that I can write some computer programs to apply the knowledge I learn in these books to all the stocks publicly traded on the 3 major US stock exchanges. It has worked out well for me in the past to write computer programs to filter down all the raw data to a short list of prospects. Then, I investigate these prospects by hand every morning and hopefully find some good opportunities.

For anyone who I haven’t scared off yet, here is the two books I bought:

	Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets: A Comprehensive Guide to Trading Methods and Applications by John J. Murphy
	A Complete Guide to Technical Trading Tactics : How to Profit Using Pivot Points, Candlesticks & Other Indicators by John L. Person

I just finished a great book called The Random Walk Guide to Investing: Ten Rules for Financial Success by Burton G. Malkiel. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a retirement account, such as a 401k or IRA. It lays out a simple plan using easy to understand rules on how to allocate and invest your retirement funds.

I am personally going to use this investment guide to manage Aliciana’s 401k. This book convinced us to start funding her 401k as soon as possible and to continue funding it over her entire career. Everyone should fund their 401k or IRA as much as possible… the tax benefits are amazing! The true magic of his plan is to simply start saving a little money out of every paycheck as early in your life as possible, save a ton on your taxes, and let compounded interest turn it into a large sum by the time you retire.

This book gives a very convincing analysis which supports its claim that for long term investing you are better off buying “Total Market Index Funds” and similar types of funds for bonds and REITs. These types of funds won’t make you rich overnight but over 20 years they will provide a very good annual return, at least 10% APR for the stock fund.

So, I recommend reading this book for anyone who has to manage their retirement funds. If you are paying a financial planner to do it for you, chances are that you would be better off firing him and managing your funds yourself. The author gives plenty of real world data to back up this claim.

As for how I am going to manage our own retirement funds, based on this book’s advice, it is quite simple. I am going to allocate 80% of our 401k funds in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, 10% in the Vangaurd Total Bond Market Index Fund, and 10% in the Vanguard REIT Index Fund. As we age, I am going to slowly allocate more money into the bond and REIT funds, so that by the time we are 55 I should have 40% in the stock fund, 30% in the bond fund and 30% in the REIT fund. It really is that simple, no financial planner needed, all you need is this book.

The books below are some of the best writing I have ever read. I recommend that everyone at least read them once. I will be adding to this section as time goes on but it will remain a list of the best of the best. With any of these books you can’t go wrong.

	Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card A classic science fiction story about a war with an alien species and the children shaped to fight it. The whole series of books is great but this book, the first in the series, is the best.
	Neuromancer by William Gibson This story paints the most vivid depiction of the future I have ever read. But what else would you expect from the novel that coined the term ‘cyberspace’.
	The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams The whole ‘5 book trilogy’ are the funniest books I have ever read. This book is the first story in the series. Read the series to find the answer to life and why you should always bring a towel.
	Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson A wholly believable future is described in this novel about a future America weaved together with virtual reality, pizza delivery, robot guard dogs, Sumerian myth, Infocalypse, religious extremists, and Samurai fighting. The ideas about the future of virtual reality alone make this book worth the read.
	Just for Fun by Linus Torvalds A book from the creator of Linux about the birth of his operating system. This novel is filled with humor, interesting insights, computer history, and ultimately an intriguing story about how a simple desire can end up changing the world. Read this book if you want to know why I do what I do.
	1984 by George Orwell The classic novel about Big Brother and its control over humanity. Even though it was written in 1949, it is still a prophetic warning about powerful government, limited rights, and other dangers of the modern world.
	Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury I read this story in junior high and it changed my life. It is quick read so you have no excuse not to read it. This story paints a world where books are illegal and thinking is a thing of the past. In our age of computers, television, and other technologies, this book’s message is more important now than it has ever been. Please read this book !!!