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Books

Over the years, I have amassed a quite a library of Engineering, Programming and PC Interfacing books. Many of these books have become very important resources for me to be able to do my work, both at the office and at home. For most of these books, I have had to buy multiple copies both because they have been borrowed and not returned and because others felt they were excellent resources and wanted their own copies.

My wife and I are also voracious readers; more than once when our children have brought friends over, they've taken a look at our living room, with all it's overflowing bookshelves, and said "Wow, you live in a library!" I have always felt it a shame that we have all these great books and have not been able to recommend them to people other than our friends.

The purpose of this page is to provide a list of the best of the technical books that I have found along with a few others that I have found interesting, useful or just worth taking a break and reading. To make it easier for you to find and order these books, I have provided links to Amazon.com to allow you to order the books at their discounted prices. Amazon.com is a wonderful Internet resource for buying books quickly and inexpensively.

Some concern has been expressed on the PICList about ordering books from Amazon.com. When I read what the problems were, I realized that there were a few things that aren't completely intuitive for ordering books from them using my web page. To avoid problems with dealing with Amazon.com, here are a few suggestions that you should follow:

If you are going to select books from my web pages, once you have selected a book and put it into your "shopping cart", you can "back" your browser back to my web pages and look at other books. When you are finished, you can go to Amazon.com and "Check out" with all the books previously selected saved by the Amazon.com server.

The Amazon.com server will save the selections that you have made for several days, so if you have problems with your selections, don't worry they will be saved.
When ordering your books, check the availability. Some books will be "not yet available" or "on back order". If some books are not currently available, you may want to break up the order so the currently available books will be delivered immediately and the other ones will be shipped when they are available.
When you order the books, make sure you understand the shipping options. I typically use the least expensive option and delivery takes about two weeks. The middle option is usually less than a week and there is an overnight shipping option which is quite expensive.

I have not included the shipping charges because these change over time. There is generally a base charge along with a per book charge.
- There is one ordering option that you should be aware of; You can select to have your books delivered all at one time or when they become available. If you select that the books are to be delivered when each one is available, you will get multiple packages, each with their own base charge.
Watch your "account status" from the Amazon.com home page and begin timing the shipping from when the order indicates that it has been shipped. I have had a couple of orders where a book took longer to get than what was indicated when I ordered it and the entire order seemed to take a very long time to arrive.
When ordering books, make sure you look for the discount that Amazon.com applies to specific books. You'll usually find that a softcover book has a larger discount than a hardcover book (and they're usually cheaper to start with).
If you are ordering from somewhere other than the US, make sure you understand what your exchange rate is and if there are local stores you can buy the book at a rate better than the current exchange rate.
Amazon.com is designed for web transactions. This means they are most efficient for web orders using credit cards. Sending cheques or calling in orders will take extra time and there is more opportunity for errors or problems in getting exactly what you want.
If you are not happy with what you have been sent or the service you've received, call them or return the books. Amazon.com will accept returns for up to thirty days.