As it stands now (8/28/01 2:30 PM MDT), PM has book reviews (1 or more) on the following:

• Advanced Perl Programming
• CGI Programming 101 - Perl for the WWW
• Data Munging with Perl
• Debugging Perl: Troubleshooting for Programmers
• Effective Perl Programming
• Elements of Programming with Perl
• Essential Perl 5 for Web Professionals
• Go to Perl 5
• Instant Perl Modules
• Learning Perl
• Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
• Mastering Algorithms with Perl
• Mastering Regular Expressions
• Network Programming With Perl
• Object Oriented Perl
• Perl 5 Pocket Reference
• Perl 5 Quick Reference
• Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web
• Perl CD Bookshelf
• Perl for System Administration
• Pragmatic Programmer, The
• Programmation avance en Perl
• Programming Perl (2nd Ed)
• Programming the Perl DBI
• SAMS Teach yourself PERL in 21 days
• The Mythical Man-Month
• The Perl 5 Programmer's Reference
• The Perl Cookbook
• Win32 Perl Scripting: The Administrator's Handbook
• Writing CGI Applications with Perl

What I'd like to see in addition to the reviews is some sort of rank for each book. The obvious mechanism would be the node/vote system, only here you would simply cast a vote (up or down) on each/any book. The idea would be that a review provides an evaluation by one (sometimes more) person/s, while the ranking would be a kind of 'whole site' estimation. Even a quick site search is enough to prove that almost everyone has something to say about books as a Perl resource, so it's not like we would have a shortage of material here!

I have only a foggy notion about the implementation details, but what I vaguely have in mind would be something similar to what die-hard science-fiction readers enjoy in the magazine Locus. They do the ranking by sales volume taken from places like Amazon, Borders and B&N. A useful side effect that I've noticed is that reading the lists often highlights books you might not have thought to read!

Advantages

• Increases the value of the 'Reviews'.
• Another way of sharing expertise/knowledge—might even lead to more reviews!
• Add to the chances of 'link through' with FatBrain.

Disadvantages

• One more thing to maintain.
• Remote possibility that it might cause descension.

hsm

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