A lot of distributed systems literature seems to be too abstract for real world systems engineering. Where does one go to learn about architecting a distributed system on a that works in the real world?
The author of this paper, Martin Kleppmann, is writing a book "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032175.do?cmp=af-stra...). I've been reading it via the O'Reilly immediate access and I think that it's the book you are looking for.
I know you said a lot of it is too abstract, but I really enjoyed the readings from UIUC's CS525 when I was in school (years ago). The selected papers are a great "who's who" of distributed systems research.