Great timing and submission, thank you for posting! I've been meaning to get more in depth knowledge on distributed systems, but despite having access to several academic (text)books, I felt overwhelmed and didn't know where to start exactly and what sub-topics I might want to focus on.

Just downloaded and sent to Kindle 'Distributed Systems for Fun and Profit' as a free PDF written by an engineer currently working for Stripe, a book recommended in the article. It's only 62 pages and doesn't feel intimidating!