Designing Data Intensive Applications 2nd edition

I struggled with it as well, and the experience was made worse by the echo chamber of people around me insisting it was the greatest secret to being successful in software architecture. Who knows if they actually read it.

What helped was to watch a youtube series run by a book club where they actively discussed and took notes together on it. It cut through a lot of the dry writing and got to the point of what the author tries to say. I didn't come out of it feeling more confident, but if I think of something relevant I vaguely remember from the book, I know I can pull it out as a reference at any time.

It's not exactly GEB: there many paragraphs that are really just lists of things to go and look at deeper, and are therefore skim-readable (or a useful list of search terms). The chapters are structured quite similarly so you get a feeling of where the meat is after a few. Works well as an occasional downtime book that feeds some good thinking away from it, IMHO