Current Reading List – Programming Books

I haven’t been good at letting folks know about the programming books I’m currently reading, but here’s a list of what is currently laying around my desks (or in the car, because you never Know when you will have 5 minutes of “free” time sitting in traffic or waiting for your kid to get out of some after school event):

• Application Architecture for .Net: Designing Applications and Services by MSPress– I got this book in the mail from Microsoft via the MVP program.  I wasn’t sure if I could talk about it, but it seems that it is publicly available (it is on Amazon), so I guess I can.  If you dabble in architecture with .Net on any level, you need have this book.  It is from the Pattern and Practices group, and although some of the material is covered on the Architecture site, there is a lot that isn’t on the site, and it is much easier to find in this book that on the site.
• XQuery : The XML Query Language by Michael Brundage – If you are playing with Whidbey, or are interested in XQuery, I highly recommend this book.  XQuery is a new language that does for XML the same thing SQL does for relational databases.  Michael does an excellent job covering the language, and has a bunch of tips and tricks embedded in here.  XQuery is definitely something that fits very well into my toolbox of languages.
• First Look at ADO.NET and System Xml v 2.0 by Alex Homer, Dave Sussman, Mark Fussell – I’m reading this as part of the .Net Book Club.  Great intro to the new features of System.Xml 2.0 and ADO.Net.  If you are reading this book, come join us in the book club.
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler – This book has earned a permanent place on my desk.  I’m always turning to it to either check out a good pattern for some new code I’m working on, or to help document stuff that I’ve already done.  Although not specific to .Net, it does have some .Net examples, but the true beauty of this book is that it isn’t as generic as the GoF book, but not as specific as say a cookbook.  Plus, as Martin says, he started this book just to help communicate his architect ideas to other developers, and that is exactly what I find most useful about the book. 

There are more books than these 4 that I’m currently reading, but these are the top 4 that I haven’t talked about recently.