I have no experience with books from PACKT, and usually lean toward Apress books, but I just ordered Learning Website Development with Django. It has some decent (hopefully authentic) reviews on Amazon, so I figured I would give it a shot.

I was originally going to order The Definitive Guide to Django, but the rather poor reviews of it scared me away. Same with the warnings of typos and errors in the Sams Teach Yourself Django in 24 Hours book.

According to the Wikipedia page, PACKT is an interesting company. Check them out.

Quoth The Django Book website:

The book is due to be published in December 2007 by Apress, but in the meantime you can read the “beta” book online. The final book will be posted when the print version ships.

Announced back in February 2006 originally with a March 2007 release date, pushed back to June, and now December… so we’ve been waiting for a while on this one. But Apress typically does a good job, so I’m looking forward to it.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan has been called one of the top five best nonfiction books of 2006, and is frequently mentioned by foodies on the web.

Quoth Pollan’s website:

In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating.

The book weighs in at an overly long 411 pages, almost a third of which is a discussion of corn production. From there it meanders through feedlots, “industrial organic” farms, small organic farms, mushroom hunting, and wild pig hunting; including a huge section devoted to Pollan’s omphaloskeptical discussion of whether or not he should be a vegetarian.

Unfortunately I found it to be rather disappointing….

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Inspired by the reading habits of Eric and Patrick, I’ll be posting quick reviews of some of the books I’m reading. Probably not Python related, but whatever. :) -JPM

The first third of Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan is basically his personal story of growing up in Mexico, moving to the United States, and then growing his dog training business with a mixture of luck and talent. What follows is his explanation and examples of his ideas of calm-assertive vs. calm-submissive energy and his mantra of “dogs are not humans.”

Being a regular watcher of The Dog Whisperer, I can’t say I learned much that was completely new in the book. It was, however, nice to have him discuss many of the ideas presented in the show in much greater detail.

As he makes clear in the beginning, this is not a “how to” book that deals with teaching verbals commands and tricks. It’s a discussion of the psychology of dogs, their needs, and how to harness their pack instincts to keep them (and you) happy and balanced. Strongly recommended for people with out of control dogs, but also a decent/quick read for anyone who wants to understand their four-legged friend a little better.

Looks like they skipped over Chapters 7 and 8 for now, but Chapter 9 is up.

The first four chapters of the Django book are now online, with a total of almost 500 comments. Cool.

As announced on the Django blog the other day, the Django book will be available online before the actual book is released. So far only the first two chapters are available, but more should be released throughout November.

From the Amazon product description of the upcoming Django book:

In Pro Django: Web Development Done Right, Adrian Holovaty, one of Django’s creators, and Django lead developer Jacob Kaplan-Moss show you how they use this framework to create award-winning web sites. Over the course of three parts, they guide you through the creation of a web application reminiscent of chicagocrime.org.

The release date is currently March 26, 2007. I think that might be later than originally expected, but I’m not sure.

The self-published Getting Real book from 37Signals is now available online for free (HTML). The PDF and print versions are still available for $19 and $29, respectively.

The cover of the TurboGears book (previously mentioned) has a lightsaber on it? Um… ok.

Now where is that Django book?