Picked up some new books
Last week I finished the book “Prelude to Foundations” by Isaac Asimov. It was recommended to me by my boss, and I have to say it was one of the better books I have read in a while. I usually try to switch up reading technical books with non-technical books, and since I haven’t read any new technical books I decided to head over to chapters and pickup some new books.
I have head great things about both Java Concurrency by Brian Goetz, and Effective Java 2nd Edition by Joshua Bloch. The real problem with both these books is they are hard to find in store. I happened to come across both of them at my local Chapters, and quickly snatched them up.
I have been reading Java Concurrency over the past couple of days and I have to say this is one of the best Java books I’ve read in a while. Brian Goetz has a way of writing that really helps bring complex problems into perspective.
One of my initial gripes about this book was the lack of exercises at the end of the Chapters, however now that I’m a little ways into the book I’ve noticed that the examples chosen for each Chapter progress almost as a set of exercises in themselves. Not to mention that Brian picks examples that relate well to the real world, instead of most of the silly easy examples found in other books I’ve read.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to delve into the world of Java Concurrency, or even someone looking to freshen up on the latest stuff available in JDK 1.5 in terms of threading. This book has really helped me in my pet projects and in my day-to-day work so I would definitely recommend getting it and keeping it close by.
I’ve yet to really get into Effective Java, but the little bits I’ve read here and there have really shown me that this this book lives up to all the hype about it. Joshua is a smart man, and this book definitely reflects his intelligence. It is well organized and shows you things about Java that you never thought even existed. I’m really excited to delve deaper into this one.
I’ll write a more thorough review once I’m finished with it. Anyway until next time …
Tags: books, java, programming, reviews