Why would you hate a book !
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Some would argue that.... oh wait, this isn't the soapbox, never mind... ;)
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
It's the greatest work of Non-Fiction ever written...wait, this still isn't the soapbox. :-D
Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Me blog, You read
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Does no one read fiction any more? To me the word "book" brings to mind fiction first, all other forms a distant second. I rarely, almost never, buy any non fiction books any more. If it's data I need I can find it all online.
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
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Recently we had a great discussion on why would you read a book !, if you missed that here[^] is the link This also begs another important question: Why would you hate a book ! Here are some of my reasons 1. Lack of cohesive organization and planning is annoying. 2. If the book is repetitive. 3. If the author mentions topics before they have been properly introduced, 5. When the layout of the book is beginners and it claims to be "professional" in the title. 6. If the book covers more than an overview of all the features, but provides very little "best practice" advice beyond the basics. 7. Book which teaches to to write an applications but won't necessarily teaches to do it well. 8. If the book is not properly researched 9. Approach of having multiple authors cover the same topics without enough editing to make it one cohesive piece. 10. If the book writing is complex or the author is prejudice So what's your reason ?
Omit Needless Words - Strunk, William, Jr.
Vista Gadget Book: Creating Vista Gadgets using HTML, CSS, & JavaScript. Sample chapter here Selling Your Gadget
Given that it's more in the hands of your publisher than your own I doubt this will help much, but here goes. A great many of us dislike books that are "sold by the pound." Many publishers think that in order to justify the price, a tech book has to have a high page count. In fact, most techies I talk to want the clearest and quickest path to figuring out technology XYZ, and we often don't read a tech book cover to cover. We zero in on the chapter we need to hit a deadline, and we don't want to wade through 50 pages that are mostly screen shots of a Visual Studio wizard that the publisher wanted to bump the page count. Since much of this is a marketing decision you may have to arm wrestle your publisher to actually keep the page count down, but if you can say more with less, you'll be a rock star in the eyes of your peers.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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12. No pictures/diagrams/visual objects.
xacc.ide - now with TabsToSpaces support
IronScheme - 1.0 alpha 3 out now"Anna Karenina" ain't for you then :D
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
Who would bother reading fiction ? I was surprised to see that most people assume he means IT books tho.
Christian Graus Please read this if you don't understand the answer I've given you "also I don't think "TranslateOneToTwoBillion OneHundredAndFortySevenMillion FourHundredAndEightyThreeThousand SixHundredAndFortySeven()" is a very good choice for a function name" - SpacixOne ( offering help to someone who really needed it ) ( spaces added for the benefit of people running at < 1280x1024 )
Christian Graus wrote:
Who would bother reading fiction ?
Me. Hard Sci-Fi or fantasy escapism. Sometimes there is only so much on computer subjects you can handle and then you have to get very far away from the subject. Hard Sci-Fi is technical, but it can make you feel like there is hope that technology can get somewhere, or do something, it is still escapism, just directed escapism. Fantasy is about as far away from technology as you can get, unless you read the Rick Cook books, or Christopher Stasheff. Escapism is useful once in a while.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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That doesn't rule out all books; until work got in the way, I was quite engrossed in Petzold's Punisher[^]. Once you get over not having visual objects, which can be easy, considering most people read fiction without them, and Petzold's prose is good, it keeps you reading; enlightening and entertaining at times, analytical at others, and more didactic elsewhere. It is an epic saga: he starts out assuming the reader knows nothing of how Windows applications work, with a brief but complete explanation about the message loop and windows, before gradually moving forward into how WPF basics operate. It is slow reading, because I can't help not just scan it; he has me reading every sentence.
Semicolons: The number one seller of ostomy bags world wide. - dan neely
I've been going through the book as well. One of my favorite WPF -- heck one of my favorite programming books. :-\ Flynn
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I've been going through the book as well. One of my favorite WPF -- heck one of my favorite programming books. :-\ Flynn
Do you also find his prose engaging as I do, and not just the technical content? I'm going to resume my reading tonight, then start again and do some exercises to recap, then continue.
Semicolons: The number one seller of ostomy bags world wide. - dan neely
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Do you also find his prose engaging as I do, and not just the technical content? I'm going to resume my reading tonight, then start again and do some exercises to recap, then continue.
Semicolons: The number one seller of ostomy bags world wide. - dan neely
I do. I also enjoy reading his blog. :) I haven't been able to read much of it lately though as I've had to put WPF aside for ASP.NET. Once that project's done, I'll probably start a chapter or two back from where I left off to get back up to speed. Flynn
_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
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Christian Graus wrote:
Who would bother reading fiction ?
Me :-O. I read science fiction; mostly space opera and military. I don't read to be enlightened or to broaden my horizons, I read for entertainment and relaxation. The more escapist the drivel, the better. I just finished reading Von Neumann's War[^] by John Ringo and Travis Taylor. It's been a very long time since I've purchased a technical book. I think the last one was the CSS Pocket Reference by Eric Meyer from O'Reilly. Except for basic references, most of them seem to be regurgitation of material more conveniently available online (like at CP).
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
Von Neumann's War[^] by John Ringo and Travis Taylor.
Have you read their Vorpal Blade books yet? (Into the Looking Glass, Vorpal Blade, Maxome Foe, Claws that Catch (forthcoming, formerly The Tum Tum Tree). If not they're a great read and much less depressing than VNW. Pay close attention to the marines in MF when you read it. :)
You know, every time I tried to win a bar-bet about being able to count to 1000 using my fingers I always got punched out when I reached 4.... -- El Corazon
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
Von Neumann's War[^] by John Ringo and Travis Taylor.
Have you read their Vorpal Blade books yet? (Into the Looking Glass, Vorpal Blade, Maxome Foe, Claws that Catch (forthcoming, formerly The Tum Tum Tree). If not they're a great read and much less depressing than VNW. Pay close attention to the marines in MF when you read it. :)
You know, every time I tried to win a bar-bet about being able to count to 1000 using my fingers I always got punched out when I reached 4.... -- El Corazon
I've been meaning to check those out, but my to-be-read pile keeps outpacing my reading speed :sigh:.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I've been meaning to check those out, but my to-be-read pile keeps outpacing my reading speed :sigh:.
Software Zen:
delete this;IF it'll help kick start your motivation my favorite lines from ITLG are "One of the SEALs just gave me a gun. I think that's a bad sign, I'll have to call you back." and "The cavalry has arrived." "Our cavalry is a bunch of red necks in pickup trucks?", an event later labled by a news wienie equal parts literacy and tackyness as 'the charge of the redneck brigade'. :laugh:
You know, every time I tried to win a bar-bet about being able to count to 1000 using my fingers I always got punched out when I reached 4.... -- El Corazon
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IF it'll help kick start your motivation my favorite lines from ITLG are "One of the SEALs just gave me a gun. I think that's a bad sign, I'll have to call you back." and "The cavalry has arrived." "Our cavalry is a bunch of red necks in pickup trucks?", an event later labled by a news wienie equal parts literacy and tackyness as 'the charge of the redneck brigade'. :laugh:
You know, every time I tried to win a bar-bet about being able to count to 1000 using my fingers I always got punched out when I reached 4.... -- El Corazon
Alright dammit, now I gotta go get me a copy :). I'm getting ready to go on GOBA[^], a 400 mile weeklong bike tour. It's my idea of the perfect vacation: ride for 5-6 hours in the morning, clean up, grab a chair and a good book, and relax the afternoon away. I usually take a half dozen books with me :-D.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Alright dammit, now I gotta go get me a copy :). I'm getting ready to go on GOBA[^], a 400 mile weeklong bike tour. It's my idea of the perfect vacation: ride for 5-6 hours in the morning, clean up, grab a chair and a good book, and relax the afternoon away. I usually take a half dozen books with me :-D.
Software Zen:
delete this;