For those who haven't noticed yet, the latest in a expected long line of Drupal books for this year has been published: David Mercer's verbosely-named "Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6". It is not a book for the experienced Drupaler; it's target market is people picking up Drupal, and the web for that matter, for the very first time.
Personally I think David has done a great job with it, but then I am biased; I was the tech reviewer for the book. :-) If you want an unbiased opinion, pick up a copy yourself and give it a read. Then you'll know how good it is. As an added bonus, 5% of all sales through Packt's web site are donated to the Drupal Association. Everybody wins!
Of course, there's always post-publication jitters about whether or not we got something wrong, especially since catching those was supposed to be my job. I will apologize in advance for anything I missed, and plead "we were working with a beta!" 11Heavens has already written an extensive review, and it looks like we did miss a few things, but overall it seems a positive review. Whew!
One of these days I'll have the bandwidth to write a book myself, but in the meantime being a tech reviewer is rewarding as well. Getting to see a book about the web's best software </bias> come together is exciting all on its own, but helping to shape it and get first-crack at ferreting out bugs makes it all the more interesting. It's like working on Drupal itself; whatever you do will affect thousands of people using the software you're writing or the book you're writing or reviewing. That's both awesome and frightening at the same time.
Great contribution
Larry, I think helping to get a Drupal 6 book out so shortly after it's release is a major contribution to the community. I've got my copy and I am really looking forward to going through it.
Cheers,
Kieran