There are certain types of books that I more or less assume all readers read. (Novels, for example.)
But then there are books that only YOU read. Instructional manuals for fly-fishing. How-to books for spinning yarn. How to cook the perfect souffle. Rebuilding car engines in three easy steps. Dog training for dummies. Rewiring your house without electrocuting yourself. Tips on how to build a NASCAR course in your backyard. Stuff like that.
What niche books do YOU read?
So, some of you might already know I'm a geek. Subsequently, this might not come as a very big surprise, but, please, bear with me. I've tried to make this post bright and colorful, with pictures, to make it slightly less 'geeky'. Here goes... My 'niche' books are on.... Java! Nope, not coffee. Nope, not the island. Yes, you got it - the programming language.
Those are the books I have at hand right now, at home. While some of them are purely for reference, I do tend to read some of them, just to get a better understanding of the best coding practices. I absolutely hate EJB - and if you've ever had the traumatic experience of dealing with them, you'll probably agree with me!
However, I've been teaching myself multithreading, and concurrency, in the recent past. Both important, right - I mean, you wouldn't want a single-threaded application for everything, right? 'Taming Java Threads' is probably one of the best books I've ever read, both, in terms of understanding java threads, and in terms of best practices.
What remains one of my favorite things, is Spring! I've done a couple of really cool projects using the Spring framework, and I bought a book on it, just to see how it fits together. Now that I'm relatively comfortable with Spring, it's time to move on to Hibernate?
Note: need to learn more about the Spring GUI framework as well. I did want to use that for something a year or so back, but it didn't quite pan out. :(
Aside from java (and other geekery), I love reading books on:
- Photography
- Travel - either travel journals or travelogues
- Art (and Sculpture)
- Philosophy
How about you? Do you have a geek side? Or, are there any books that you tend to read which no one else around you does?
Happy Thursday, and roll on weekend.