I went to the Haidian Book City in Beijing today, looking for books on database theory. I’ve been going crazy all week with ideas inside my head about different databases that I need to create for work, and a few for fun. But I don’t know anything about databases—not their theory, implementation, what software solutions are out there, or even how to create and access a database.
Well, I found two textbooks on databases that I could read. 99% of the books here are in Chinese, but there are a few computer science series that are available in the original English. Fortunately, the topics match my interests quite well: software development, hardware, theoretical computer science, operating systems theory, and network programming.
So I ended up purchasing one database book: Database Principles, Programming, and Performance, 2nd Ed., by Patrick and Elizabeth O’Neil.
On other subjects, I picked up two O’Reilly titles: Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, by Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman, and Mark Stone; and Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies, edited by Andy Oram. The first contains essays on the Open Source movement by the original and the continuing innovators of the movement. The second describes the phenomenon of peer-to-peer networks (file sharing networks like Napster and KaZaa) and specific applications and implementations.
I got one famous book in software development theory and practice: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. I’ve needed to read this one for a long time, so now was a good time to buy it.
And finally, I bought one Chinese title. Can I read it? Not exactly, but I bought it for the pictures. It’s called Web Color Design, and as you can guess, it has many examples of colour schemes for website design, including colour charts and RGB values of the actual example web pages and photographs. So I can use it to get some ideas for sprucing up this website.
How much did this whole book shopping spree cost me? 156 RMB. That’s $24.88 CDN approximately. Not bad for two O’Reilly books, a text book, and a book that’s entirely done in full-colour glossy pages. I figure there’s got to be some benefit to living in China and suffering from the lack of a good bookstore.
Well, enough typing. Time to curl up by the fire (I wish!) and enjoy a good book. Or five of them!