Recent Reading

I recently finished my first pass of ASP.NET 3.5 in C#2008 by MacDonald and Szpuszta. What an amazing book. I learned something new on just about every page. It's a pain in the but to lug this monster around every day (it's 1500 pages), but I learned so much that I consider it required reading for developers trying to get caught back up with technology if you've been stuck in a rut.

I've also almost completed reading Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML. The first half of this book wasn't anythingnew to me, but the second half really helped get me up to speed with CSS and since that is exactly what I am working in this week, it is really helping. It's a very quick read. I'm getting through about 200 pages a day (there are a lot of graphics). The Head First series isn't for everyone, and I thought I'd give it a try. It's great for doing catch up on technology, but I wouldn't use it to try to learn some huge new concept.

I'm debating what will be my next work topic to read about. It may be Code Complete 2 or perhaps Programming SQL Server 2005, or maybe a book specializing on LINQ.

I can't believe how much reading I am able to get done while riding the Sounder back and forth to work. It would have taken me a year to work through ASP.NET 3.5 at home. I'm definitely in the learning groove, and on track to get caught back up on the technology I need to do my job.

And the writing bug is hitting again. YAY!