Here are a few of my favorite software engineering related books I’ve read in the last year. To make this list the book had to be something I read in 2009, and it had to be interesting, useful, or just plain insanely great at totally changing my perspective on something.

• The Passionate Programmer
• Pomodoro Technique Illustrated
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams – reread, still good.
• Spring in Action
• Pragmatic Version Control Using Git
• Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk
• Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions
• EJB 3 in Action
• Land the Tech Job You Love

The “in Action” books and Git were useful at the time I read them, but could get outdated quickly.

The Passionate Programmer, Peopleware, and Pomodoro were insanely great. The Passionate Programmer puts in well thought out words many things I already knew but somehow it was great to read it. Peopleware is incredible as always but I managed to get different stuff from it this time. Pomodoro was totally new to me and I can’t believe I’ve made it this long with out using this technique, now I just need to figure out how to make this work for me in the environment I work in.

Land the Tech Job You Love was interesting and talked about a few things I had not considered before in not only looking for a job, but in reexamining the job you have.

The rest are just really good quality, interesting books that shouldn’t be outdated anytime soon and provide very useful software engineering skills, techniques, and best practices.

Here’s a tip: read Pomodoro first (2.5 to 3 hours for me), then use what you learned to make your reading time more effective with the other books.

What are your favorite software books you read in 2009?