I've been studying for 70-554 upgrade test for all of us that have fallen behind in our certifications... and thought I would take a break to read something alittle lighter.
The book is by O'reilly and is part of their Head First series, and I was originally introduced to them when I read the marvelous book titled "Head First Design Patterns". Their books are quite different in the way they teach, being more humoristic (did I make that word up), less on words and more on pictures and theoretical exercises you can just play along with, or run off and do if you think you need to practice a specific item. On of the advantages of the sparse layout of the book is, even though it is still a 600 page book, you can go through it several (6 for me) times in the same amount of time you would go through a 'normal' more word-heavy book. And most likely come away with a higher level of retention, if not from their unique format, at least from the repetition.
Anyhow, now that I wandered somewhat off to the side, what *is* bob reading?
I am still a juniorish programmer, but I have noticed one trend as I read more and write more code. The payoff from reading a design book seems to be much, much higher than a book on programming or a specific language. Why? If you build it right, you'll have more time to work out the language centric issues. If you concentrate on the language issues, you risk having a pile of unrefactored spaghetti code that is inflexible, unreadable and unmaintainable. Just 2 cents from someone who is just learning what the rest of you have probably known for years, cut a brotha some slack...and a sample page, borrowed from their site to give an idea of the books format.