One interesting trend—at least to me—is that I returned to reading a lot more web related books (10!) this year. This is in no small part related to the A Book Apart series. If they keep churning out quality books like this, that count is likely to stay very high.

As always, if the book made this list, then I enjoyed it on some level. There are far too many good books out there to suffer through one that doesn’t interest me. If I’m not enjoying it I set it aside.

If you’re looking for specific recommendations, “The Invisible Man” (which I had read before and will read again) and “The Demolished Man” top my (short) list of fiction. “Obliquity”, “Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!” and “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” are at the top for non-fiction (excluding the web-related ones).

1. Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
3. Linchpin by Seth Godin
4. Pull by David Siegel
5. The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
6. Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
7. Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
8. The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
9. Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
10. HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith
11. Obliquity by John Kay
12. Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte (See my review)
13. Adaptive Web Design by Aaron Gustafson
14. CSS3 for Web Designers by Dan Cederholm
15. The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane
16. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
17. The Invisible Man by HG Wells
18. The Filter Bubble by Eli Parson
19. Big Deal by Robert Hoekman Jr.
20. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
21. The Information by James Gleick
22. Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski (See my review)
23. Designing for Emotion by Aaron Walter
24. Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halverson
25. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
26. Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! by Douglas Coupland
27. Mindfire by Scott Berkun
28. Simple and Usable by Giles Colborne
29. Loose by Martin Thomas

Luke argues that you should design, and build, your mobile experience first. He hits you (gently) over the head with data point after data point making it increasingly obvious that this mobile first technique not only makes sense, but should in fact be the de facto standard for creating sites on today’s web. He makes his case carefully, succinctly and convincingly.

After he has you sold on the importance of this approach, he spends the rest of the book arming you with the information you’ll need to start creating better mobile experiences. He walks you through how to organize your content, develop appropriately sized touch targets, embrace new touch gestures, simplify the process of input on mobile devices and more. Amazingly, he manages to do this in only 120 pages.

All of this knowledge is described in very clear detail. The book is interspersed with subtle humor that makes the book not just educational, but entertaining as well. I was particularly fond of the revelation that anchor tags are part of HTML 0 which works in most browsers except Internet Explorer.

If you pair this book with Ethan’s ‘Responsive Web Design’ (the last book published by A Book Apart) you are arming yourself for the future. Combine these two approaches and you are well on your way to creating more bulletproof sites (if there is such a thing on today’s web).

Needless to say, I highly recommend Luke’s book. As with the rest of the A Book Apart series, it succeeds brilliantly at fulfilling their goal of arming you with the information you need quickly so you can get back to work. You would be doing yourself a disservice by not adding it to your library.

Ethan doesn’t present RWD as an end-all-be-all approach. He simply presents it as a potential solution (a good one). In his own words:

…more than anything, web design is about asking the right questions. And really, that’s what responsive web design is: a possible solution, a way to more fully design for the web’s inherent flexibility.

He does discuss the three main ingredients he laid down in his original article (flexible images, media queries and fluid grids) but he goes beyond that and acknowledges some of the initial concerns people had about the approach, and introduces some methods to potentially fix those trouble spots. Rightfully, he cautions “these aren’t problems with responsive design in and of itself—we just need to rethink the way we’ve implement it.” In his own delightfully humorous and approachable way, he challenges you not just to take a more responsive approach to your design, but to do so with a great deal of care and thoughtful consideration.

The final chapter is chock-full of topics I would like to see discussed in a bit more detail: responsive assets, context, and mobile first (which will be fleshed out in more detail in Luke’s upcoming book) for example. That’s not intended to be a slight in anyway to this book—the excellent A Book Apart series is intended to be concise and get you back out and working with your newly acquired knowledge and the content Ethan covers fits the book, and the spirit of the series, perfectly. This is just me being greedy and pining for a sequel of sorts.

It’s a bit sad to think about, but after all these years, we are just now starting to really embrace the web for what it is—a truly flexible and malleable medium. I don’t think it is out of line for me to suggest that Ethan’s book will soon be viewed in the same light as books such as Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards—as a book that challenged the way we practiced our profession and helped to push us forward.

To make a long story short, you would be doing yourself an absolute disservice by not buying this book. It lives up to the hype and then some.

As I stated last year, I don’t finish books that I am not enjoying, so each book in the list below I’d recommend to varying degrees. If I’m picking favorites, I’d have to go with Ender’s Game, The Gun Seller and Daemon for my favorite fiction reads. My top three non-fiction books this year (excluding the web-related ones) would be Amusing Ourselves to Death, Flow and Better Off.

1. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
2. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
3. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
4. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
5. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
6. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
7. The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
8. Essential PHP Security by Chris Shiflett
9. Infoquake by David Louis Edelman
10. Good to Great by Jim Collins
11. Blindness by Jose Saramago
12. The Search by John Battelle
13. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
14. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
15. Natural-Born Cyborgs by Andy Clark
16. The Forest and the Trees by Allan G. Johnson
17. Better Off by Eric Brende
18. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
19. Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol
20. The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
21. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know by Kevlin Henney
22. The Time Machine by HG Wells
23. Glasshouse by Charles Stross
24. Rapt by Winifred Gallagher
25. The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
26. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Emil Frankl
27. Daemon by Daniel Suarez
28. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
29. Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vigne
30. Rework by Jason Fried
31. Forever War by Joe Haldeman
32. HTML5 Up and Running by Mark Pilgram
33. Flashforward by Robert Sawyer

If you just want the highlights, I’d say that Neverwhere, Replay and The Road are at the top of my list as far as fiction is concerned. For non-fiction, Brain Rules, Blink and Trade-Off probably top the list.

Not to say the other books aren’t good – I typically only finish books I enjoy on some level. With as many books as I’d like to read, I don’t see the point in wasting time on a book that doesn’t manage to hold my interest on some level.

1. Shadows Linger by Glen Cook
2. The White Rose by Glen Cook
3. The Dad in the Mirror by Pat Morley
4. The Rosetta Key by William Dietrich
5. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
6. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
7. Wikinomics by Don Tapscott
8. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
9. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
10. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
11. Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins
12. Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin
13. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
14. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Dr. Meg Meeker
15. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
16. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tavris
17. Glory Road by Dan Wetzel
18. Sway by Ori Brafman
19. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
20. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
21. What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis
22. Dune by Frank Herbert
23. Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe
24. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
25. Elsewhere U.S.A by Dalton Conley
26. The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
27. The Power of Less by Leo Babuta
28. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
29. The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
30. The Last Colony by John Scalzi
31. Play by Stuart Brown
32. Replay by Ken Grimwood
33. Trade-Off by Kevin Maney
34. 1984 by George Orwell
35. Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg
36. How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
37. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick
38. Brain Rules by John Medina

Object-Oriented Javascript is written by Stoyan Stefanov, a web developer at Yahoo. Stoyan’s thoughts on all things web can be found at phpied.com. He also runs a blog on iPhone development, and a site dedicated to Javascript design patterns at JSPatterns.com (it’s been quiet for quite awhile now, but I’m hoping to see it brought out of retirement).

What’s Covered?

Exactly what you’d expect given the title….object-oriented Javascript! Actually, the book covers a lot of information, starting with the basics (variables, loops, functions, etc.) all the way through to a few basic, albeit useful, design patterns.

The book is very well written and its discussions precise. Stoyan doesn’t take a lot of time going through complex examples. Instead, he gives bite-size chunks for you to play with and expand upon. If you’re someone who prefers playing with concepts yourself over going through expanded examples in books, this book is right up your alley.

While the book has chapters on the DOM and primitive data types, it is in the discussions of topics like closures and inheritance where the book really stands out. These sometimes confusing topics are presented in a very clear and concise way, helping to break down the learning barrier that so often stands in the way of truly understanding those subjects.

Should I Read It?

The book is intended to be accessible to even developers with no prior Javascript experience, and it does a reasonable job of doing so. Thankfully, the information is covered very well, making it likely that even the introductory chapters will be worth the read for more experienced Javascript developers.

I’m sure the refinement and overall quality of the information presented is in no small part due to the plethora of quality technical reviewers. It’s clear Stoyan took the task of accurately presenting this information very seriously, as his list of technical reviewers sounds a bit like a who’s who of web development.

Final Verdict

I really enjoyed Object Oriented Javascript and highly recommend it. For beginners, its not as soft an introduction as DOM Scripting, nor is it as exhaustive in detail as PPK on Javascript. That being said, its content is perhaps the most complete of any Javascript book accessible to beginners that I’ve read thus far, and it’s certainly one of the best written books I’ve read. Even more experienced developers will find very useful information in some great coverage of more advanced object-oriented techniques and very useful appendices.

Great…Where Do I Get a Copy?

• Buy Through Amazon.com
• Get the book from Packt Publishing

SocialCorp is written by Joel Postman, currently the Chief Enterprise Social Business Strategist at Intridea, a social app development company. Joel frequently blogs on social media marketing and other related topics at www.socializedpr.com.

What’s Covered?

In today’s web, a company’s online presence extends far beyond their website. Thanks to the rise of social communities like Facebook and Twitter, and the incredible reach a simple blog post can have, consumers are discussing company products and services, both positively and negatively, all over the web. This presents an incredible opportunity for companies to interact with their customers in ways that can feel a bit foreign to people accustomed to traditional marketing.

That’s where SocialCorp comes in. Joel has written a fantastic book to give to anyone looking to get started in, or relatively new to using social media for marketing for corporate companies. Joel writes in a very engaging, conversational tone, and covers a lot of ground in this fairly short book.

SocialCorp introduces the reader to examples of companies that have had tremendous success with social media (like Dell, HSBC and GM for example) and to some examples of companies whose social campaigns missed the mark or backfired. In fact, that’s one of the best parts of the book. Joel is willing to discuss both how social media can help if used correctly, and how social media can hurt a company if used improperly.

The truth is, social marketing is a better fit for some companies than for others, and SocialCorp tries to help you understand the difference. There’s even a handy social media readiness quiz intended to help you identify if a company is ready to effectively use social media to interact with their customers online.

Should I Read It?

Like I stated above, at under 200 pages, SocialCorp is a short read. Don’t let that fool you, as there is no shortage of helpful information. SocialCorp provides numerous case studies of how companies today are making use of social media, and points you in the direction of numerous tools online to help you to best utilize and measure your social campaigns.

The book is intended to be a very practical introduction to social marketing, and it accomplishes this goal very well. Social marketing requires a significant change in mindset from conventional marketing, and as a result, it can be a bit difficult to grasp at first. SocialCorp provides a gentle way to help understand the how’s and more importantly, the why’s involved with social media.

The Final Verdict

SocialCorp is a great book to share with co-workers, bosses, employees, and corporate executives who are interested in social media, but could use a little extra information to get them truly engaged. There’s a lot of value offered by social media that is just waiting to be tapped into, and SocialCorp does a great job of explaining how you can do just that.

Great…Where Do I Get a Copy?

• Buy Through Amazon.com
• Get the book from Peachpit

Mobile Web Development is written by Nirav Mehta, the head of Magnet Technologies a software development firm in India. He blogs about a variety of business and tech topics at www.mehtanirav.com.

What’s Covered?

Mobile Web Development covers a wide variety of topics related to…guess what….mobile web development. Nirav does a fantastic job of introducing a wide variety of technologies needed to begin mobile web development including sending and receiving SMS and MMS messages, optimizing your site for mobile devices and using AJAX on the mobile web.

The book, from Packt Publishing, takes a very solution-based approach. Each chapter, with the exception of the first and last, has a very specific task that it is concerned with accomplishing. Usually, I’m not too awful fond of the format. It often feels like such books aren’t teaching me a topic so much as giving me snippets of code I am comfortable with manipulating.

This book, however, is an exception to that rule. Each chapter, in addition to accomplishing the task at hands, takes the time to explain the possible solutions to the problem, and their pros and cons. The result is that once you’ve finished the book, you have a nice foundation of real working knowledge that will allow you to immediately get started with mobile web development. For those of us that may want a deeper understanding of the technologies, there are plenty of nods towards resources that will provide that information.

Should I Read It?

The book is intended for people with at least a basic understanding of CSS, Javascript and PHP. In particular, there is a fair amount of PHP code, so you should probably be comfortable with looking through it.

The book manages to cover a surprisingly large amount of information for being such a brisk read. The truth though, is that at least in the beginning, the basics of mobile web development are quite similar to the basics of web development, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by just how easy it is to get started.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Nirav’s approach to the book is the emphasis on the user. Keeping the user in mind is always important, but particularly when the user needs to get the information quickly and needs to do it with a very small amount of screen real estate. Each chapter makes sure to mention how a given solution can help or detract from the user experience, ensuring that you have the understanding necessary to make good decisions that will benefit your users.

One Minor Complaint

The one and only issue I have with the book is that the editing could have been a bit better. Don’t worry though, the editing is no-where near bad enough to confuse you. There’s just a fair amount of a’s and the’s that are AWOL. Like I said, not enough to cause you trouble understanding the information, just enough that you’ll notice.

Final Verdict

Mobile web development is one of the most important new avenues for web developers to pursue. The amount of people making use of mobile devices to get their information on the run is growing very quickly. Minor editing issues aside, the book was a great introduction to getting started with these technologies. I would highly recommend picking up the book and giving it a thorough reading. It’s surprising how easy it is to get started in the mobile web, and after reading it you’ll have a solid base of working knowledge to allow you to start creating your own mobile web content.

Great…Where Do I Get a Copy?

• Buy Through Amazon.com
• Get the book from Packt Publishing

When I first heard Douglas Crockford was writing Javascript: The Good Parts (let’s just call it JTGP from here on out) I was anxiously awaiting the release. Crockford has been responsible for many highly regarded articles and presentations, as well as for his incredible work with JSON, JSLint and much more. While Brendan Eich may be the father of Javascript, Crockford is probably the Godfather. Even Eich himself called Crockford “the Yoda of Lambda JavaScript programming.”

What’s Covered?

JTGP does as promised…it brings to attention the best parts of the Javascript language. Topics like Objects, Inheritance, Arrays, Functions and Regular expressions are discussed throughout the book. While focusing on the “good parts” of Javascript, Crockford also points out the not-so good parts and explains why these other parts don’t fall into the good category by pointing out caveats and pitfalls.

I’ve seen it mentioned before that people complained about the book being a bit short. It weighs in at a very light 145 pages, 45 of which are appendixes. The information is quite dense however, and I thought the appendixes were extremely valuable. The appendixes include looks at what Crockford considers to be the “awful parts” and the “bad parts” of Javascript. They also include looks at JSLint and JSON as well as providing some helpful syntax diagrams.

Should I Read It?

As mentioned before, the book is short, but very dense. As a result, there is a lot of information covered, but not always a lot of explanation involved. The book seems to take a bit of a different approach than the typical Javascript book…it’s more focused on why than it is on how.

That is not at all a bad thing though. Assuming you have a nice handle on the language and it’s syntax, there is a lot to get out of reading this book. In fact, there is so much information crammed in here that it will probably take several readings to truly grasp all the information being delivered. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because it is short it is an easy-read…this book covers advanced information and does so at a very rapid pace.

The Final Verdict

JTGP is a great book for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the why behind the how. I would recommend it to anyone, though I would warn that you’ll want to have a decent understanding of the syntax before reading it…since the book focuses so much on why, there’s not a lot of explanation on how things work, and to get all that this book has to offer, you’ll want to know that. Overall, a very good book that is good enough to demand several readings.

Great…Where Do I Get a Copy?

• Buy Through Amazon.com
• Get the book from O’Reilly

Who Wrote It?

Pro JavaScript Design Patterns is written by Ross Harmes and Dustin Diaz. Ross is a front-end engineer from Yahoo! and blogs (albeit not for awhile) about random tech topics at techfoolery.com. Dustin works for Google as a user interface engineer. You can find Dustin’s musings about web development topics at dustindiaz.com. This is the first book by either author.

What’s covered?

Pro Javascript Design Patterns is about…well, applying design patterns in Javascript of course. Design patterns are reusable solutions to specific, common problems that occur in development. Design patterns are more popular in software engineering, but as web applications become larger and more robust, design patterns are starting to become a bit more well known in the web development world.

Dustin and Ross do a great job of explaining different design patterns and showing how to apply them in the world of Javascript. The book starts off by walking you through some object-oriented principles as they relate to Javascript. There are sections on such advanced topics like interfaces, encapsulation, inheritance and chaining. The second part of the book dives right into design patterns. For each pattern, you get to see how to implement it in Javascript, when to implement it, and the benefits you will see. Design patterns can also create difficulties if used inappropriately, so Ross and Dustin take a look at the disadvantages of each pattern so that you can accurately determine whether or not to use it in your applications.

Should I Read It?

The book definitely holds value for any person working with Javascript and front-end development. The ideas laid out in the book can help anyone working with the language to create higher-quality, efficient code. Particularly developers who work with large scale Javascript applications will benefit from the book, as that is what design patterns seem to be best suited for.

Make no mistake, the book’s title starts with the word ‘Pro’ for a reason…this is not a book intended for beginners. It is a very concisely written book that doesn’t take a lot of time setting the tone…the authors dive right into advanced concepts and code. If you are just getting rolling with Javascript or you don’t have a good grasp of object-oriented programming in Javascript, then you should probably pick up another book and come back to this later. On the other hand, if you are familiar with object-oriented programming in another language, you may find the book still manageable. That’s part of the beauty of design patterns…the theory works regardless of the language…it’s the syntax and implementation that can differ.

Final Verdict

All in all, I really enjoyed the book. It can take awhile to work your way through it (this is not a bed-stand book), but it is definitely worth it as the concepts addressed are invaluable to creating quality code. For anyone doubting the power of Javascript, this book is a real eye-opener. You will find that Javascript’s flexibility offers a lot of possibilities and by using it, along with industry-recognized design patterns, you can develop scripts that are both easy to communicate and easy to maintain.

Great…Where Do I Get A Copy?

• Buy through Amazon.com
• Go to the official book site
• Get the eBook from Apress