Book reviews

Hi all,
I was looking at the book reviews at the bunk house and I think they are a bit outdated. Either that or I am referring to books that are not very good. For example, there are no reviews for any of the HF series. There's an editorial review, but is there someone at Javaranch who could do the review. (I am a new member and this is my first post, so excuse me if I am asking for the obvious). How about a shootout of the major books for every topic. Then again, some books are good for certification, some for reference, some as beginner's text and some as advanced books. Could there be like a check list for these too. I am reading HF Servlets and JSP right now. I am an intermediate level user of these trechnologies. So, I am using the book to learn new things as well as to get ready for the certification. But I am not sure how closely the book follows the spec OR to what extent and detail, the various features, pitfalls, design patterns etc. are covered.

I think we need something like this especially for the J2EE spec as there are so many choices and so many different ways to do one thing, its very easy for newbies to err or to follow wrong patterns, use the wrong datatypes for doing something etc.
I just realized that I asked for a bible for everything. But it sure would be nice to know what we will know after reading a book AND ALSO, what we won't.
Harsh.

Head First Java review.

Head First EJB review.

Head First Design Patterns review.

Head First EJB review.

As far as "shootouts": book reviewing is fairly subjective. One person's "best book" is often another person's middle-of-the-road. Most of the time, evaluating criteria like "coverage of the spec" isn't practical or even possible; and even if it was, I don't think that would be a good measurement of quality.

But enjoy reading the reviews, and use them to help you decide what books to buy!

Hi,
When I say shoot outs, I mean deciding on a common base level and taking it from there. Its true that different people would view different books well, differently; but I was talking about just the content of the books (topic coverage, adherence to specs, better code examples e.g. code that follows industry coding practices which would be a great help for beginners and even for mid-level people etc.) Of course anyone can go to the local book store and see if a particular presentation suits him or her or not.
But thank you for replying and I hope I can see more reviews which follow the format described above. (Here, I am assuming that its the best book review format.

)
Harsh.