The already mentioned The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition is so far the best I have read. It's not overly specific to one single thing, it tries to teaches general principles and good practice.[1]

I also have a personal recommendation for when you want to better understand testing, QA, or want to/have to work with QA people. [2]

[1] https://pragprog.com/titles/tpp20/the-pragmatic-programmer-2... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Learned-Software-Testing-Cont...

While other commenters are correct that manual QA is a mindset, there are readings that can help develop that mindset.

I have new QA engineers read the first five or six chapters of "Testing Computer Software":

http://www.amazon.com/Testing-Computer-Software-2nd-Edition/...

to get a feel for the mindset and methodologies and to help them understand what testing can and can't accomplish.

"Lessons Learned in Software Testing", mentioned by another commenter, is another good resource. Lots of good anecdotes:

http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Learned-Software-Testing-Conte...

Both are a bit dated in some ways ("Testing" has a section on filing paper bug reports), but the lessons and thinking are still highly relevant.

Point him to "Lessons Learned in Software Testing" by Bach, Kaner and Pettichord: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471081124

Also, "manual testing" is a slightly unfortunate monicker for the activity we are discussing. It is bound to generate some degree of incomprehension or even hostility on the part of some people, for no foreseeable benefit. "Testing" will do. It is something you do with your head primarily, your hands being involved to pretty much the same degree that they are in programming (and we don't usually call that "manual programming").