I was so excited to read that Amazon.com had selected their Best Computer Books of 2004. Surely Ed Bott’s Your New PC or Windows XP Inside Out, Second Edition or even the massive Windows XP Inside Out Deluxe, Second Edition would be on the list!
Fat chance. I don’t know who was in charge of assembling this collection, but I sure would like him to pass along whatever he was smoking.
The list gets off to a promising start with Excel Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools. Lots of people use Excel, and this “small, fact-dense book” is probably going to be very useful. I might even learn something from it.
But then the selection just heads off into the woods.
How many people do you know who are planning to take the Sun Certified Web Component Developer 1.4 exam and need to learn more about Head First Servlets with JSP? Is the American public really just dying to learn about the “extract, transform, and load (ETL) phase of the data warehouse development life cycle”? Is a strategy guide on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Edition really a computer book? Were 30% of the best computer books of the year really all about the nuts and bolts of using advanced workstations to create big-budget Hollywood movies?
And while The Worlds 20 Greatest Unsolved Problems sounds like a fascinating read, it is billed as a look at “current debates in astronomy and cosmology, physics and astrophysics, biology and paleontology, neuroscience, geology, chemistry, and energy.” So why is it on a “Best Computer Books” list?
Nothing on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Nothing on Linux or Mac OS X or cascading style sheets or PHP or Adobe Photoshop or computer security or digital music or photography. You know, topics that lots of people might actually be interested in.
From all of us computer book authors, thanks for the support, Amazon. (Not.)
Ed Bott 
The Amazon list is bizarre. When I go to Borders or Barnes & Noble, I am always on the lookout for good books that offer new or better ways to set up, run, and/or maintain Windows XP and to select the best software to install with Windows XP. Some of these books are better than others, but if I am representative of the type of person who buys computer books at these bookstores or online stores like Amazon, there is a heavy demand for them. There is virtually no demand from us non-IT professionals for the types of books on Amazon’s list.
I have a degree in computer science and have been earning a living as a developer since 1978, and that was a terrible list of books even for developers. I do highly recommend Joel Spolsky’s book, though, if you haven’t read it.
I saw this list yesterday and scratched my head. All I can think of is how similar it is to “Greatest Books” list where someone tosses in several current authors who happen to be popular, but by no means great.