I own this, and it is wonderful.
Creational patterns, structural patterns, behavioral patterns. This book will blow your mind continuously and repetitively and probably make you enormously better at everything that you do that requires structure of any kind.
I'm reading it, and I keep having to look stuff up. It's wonderful.
These following four are from the "new books" shelves in the university library.
2. LINQ programming by Mayo c2009 http://www.amazon.com/LINQ-Programming-Joe-Mayo/dp/0071597832
LINQ is about databases. LINQ is to databases as web 2.0 is to 1995.
First sentence starts with "C# 3.0 and .NET 3.5 introduce a new set of language features and APIs for working with data called Language Integrated Query (LINQ)." So if you hate it already, go away and be a hater, because that's what the entire book is about. It actually looks pretty cool.
Here, have an uninformative Wiki link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query
3. Eyetracking Web Usability by Nielsen and Pernice c2010 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eyetracking-Usability-Voices-That-Matter/dp/0321498364
Contrary to what I actually thought, this book is actually about what your eye looks at. Right now my eye is looking at the inside of my eyelid, because I'm tired and typing by touch. Dammit, typo. Go back and fix. Zone out while typing again- this time with eyes open but unfocused in the direction of my keyboard. Man, someone could make some serious revenue by sticking an ad in the whitespace to the right of the textbox that I'm typing in right now. Come on, people- the money isn't in ads on the blog, but in ads on the blog interface! Sooo many people blog that there's gotta be some serious money in there.
On the other hand I'd probably go a little mad if there was an ad there, especially if it were moving or blinking.
We're all guilty of immediately clicking the big button, then saying "oops" ...we're pretty well-trained lab rats.
One last note: lots of cool color pictures of websites with eyetrack patterns superimposed.
4. Six Themes on Variation, edited by Hardt. http://books.google.com/books?id=zuWttfJmexwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Six+Themes+on+Variation,+edited+by+Hardt.&source=bl&ots=B7wgOJhzxL&sig=tgH2fBx9W1Jer7m9u6_EFHdjMjs&hl=en&ei=gZqaTO2NCsSnnQfCocntDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Calculus of variations! Little eentsy book. alephomega might <3>
5. Protectors of Privacy by Newman http://www.amazon.com/Protectors-Privacy-Regulating-Personal-Economy/dp/0801445493
It's a nontechnical book with discussions of politics and regulations, expertise as power (in online communities), and makes surprisingly little mention of encryption. it addresses the issue of court cases about what one person accessed that was illegal in their country but hosted in another country. Lots of international law issues. This book is very meta and summarizes itself a little often. The bibliography is long and beautiful. Was this someone's thesis?
I was hoping for more discussion of crypto.