I have a lot of computer books, I work on various platforms and with several different languages and need my reference books to remind of of syntax as I swap from one language to another in the course of working on the various projects I have on the go at any one time. However, I don’t read these books, or try out the examples, I just grab them when I can’t remember what a particular function is called in a certain language, look it up and sling them back on the shelf again.
Every now and then however, a book comes along that spends more time on my desk than on my shelves, that engages me and makes me want to read further than simply solving the problem that caused me to pick it up in the first place. The PHP Anthology from Sitepoint is one such book (pair of books in fact!), and I have been meaning to post about them for a while as I have found these books to be great to have to hand in the office, as they demonstrate best-practice ways of getting specific tasks done, rather than simply teaching PHP. Good stuff.