This page explains why I started the books page and how I put the books page together, for those who are curious. I started the recommended books page because people would often ask me to suggest books to read on technical topics. I heard about the Amazon Associates program and decided that it would be a good thing to organize the page around. The books page generates a very small amount of income, and it all goes towards paying for my domain and hosting services. So, the real purpose is to have place to suggest books that I have found useful.
Another purpose that this page serves is to be a place for me to experiment with web technologies. In many cases I try to do things in a way that is as simple as possible (this is a hobby after all). But if I have the time and motivation, I'll use this site as a learning experience. Often the end result is still that the site is easier to maintain and use.
Every book on this page is one that I have read (though sometime in manuscript form prior to actual publication) or had highly recommended to me, and which I used to solve a problem, or is closely related to a book that I found useful (for example a newer edition of a favorite book).
I originally updated this page entirely by hand coded html, and using some of the link generation tools that amazon provides. A short while ago I decided that it made more sense to generate the page dynamically from XML. The elements of this process are: