According to my better half, I have a serious problem.  It is bordering on an addiction. I like books! We have books strewn throughout the house.  I don’t think there is a room in the house without books;even the kitchen has over 50 books…

Like most people, we have numerous works of fiction, paperbacks & hardbacks alike… The usual authors liked by techies: Assimov, Verner Vinge, Neal Stephenson and many popular ones.  In the office, a vortex of all things paper, technical books dominate.  Everything, from the history of cryptography, Object Oriented Design, Design Patterns, C++, Python, TCL, compiler design, etc…  While I’m not the biggest spender, I’m a very good amazonian :-)

A few years ago, O’Reilly came up with a service called Safari.  This is essentially an online reference library containing over 3000 complete books from a number of publishers.  As I have been a big fan of O’Reilly books since the early 90s, I decided to subscribe.  For $20/month, you get a bookshelf with 10 slots.  You can peruse the content of any books in enough details to decide if it’s something that would interest you.  If it is, you simply add it to your bookshelf.  You can then browse the book online anytime you feel like it.  Once you’re done with it, you can remove it from your bookshelf and replace it with another book.

There are only a couple of rules:

  1. You must keep a book in your bookshelf for at least 30 days before you can remove it
  2. The books are for your personal use only.  No sharing!

You also get 5 tokens every month that allow you to get chapters in PDF format, so you can print them out if you are so inclined.

Another service offered is the availability of “Rough Cut” books, which are essentially pre-publication books.  It allows you to look at a book anywhere from 2 to 4 months before general availability.

They have also introduced the Safari Library a $40/month which does away with the restrictions.  You have access to the entire library with no restrictions on the number of books you can see at a time.

All in all, it’s a great service at an affordable price, but due to my ludite tendencies, it will never replace the feel of a real book.  I have been using Safari for over 2 years now.  I find that it’s a great way to look at a book and evaluate the content.  If the book is a keeper, I end up purchasing a hardcopy.  There is just something about paper…