The New Road

Book reviewing thoughts

I reviewed a bunch of books over the weekend. I came away with some pet peeves about technical books in general:

• Don't start out with introducing me to a keyboard, a mouse, and a monitor in a book about advanced C++ templates.
• Don't put in pictures of your kids unless they are relevant to the topic. It won't mean much to your kids, or the reader. The fact is that almost anyone with a decent IQ and follow through can write a technical book nowadays. Having penned a book isn't as special as it was even twenty years ago. They aren't going to appreciate it like we would have. Leave the kid pictures to the wallet and desk.
• Give the readers a break. Some books are marketed as a beginners introduction that take you on a rocket ride to advanced topics in chapter two. It's like being on a roller coaster without seat belts. Most people will fall off. Give us a break. We need to have jobs in order to pay for your book. So pay us the respect of giving our tired eyes and brains a break.
• Use a decent type setting or word processing application that allows for real graphics. A picture is really worth a thousand words. Use them.
• But don't overuse them. A book of screen shots with half paragraphs in between each picture is a joke, just as much as a book that is all text is a joke.
• Organize for me, not you. I'm the buyer. I'm the reader. For any book there are a lot more readers then there are authors. So it doesn't make sense that the organization of the book should favor the writer. The author should always be thinking about what is best for the reader and organize the book accordingly.
• Blog the completely extraneous things. One book I read this weekend had a completely off-topic section of five pages dedicated to fooling people into thinking that you know something on mailing lists. It was funny, insightful, and completely inappropriate. Put it on the web, like this. No reason to waste trees to print that crap.