iText in Action (Yay!)

I finally got my copy of iText in Action and am really jazzed about it. I have been working off of tutorials, articles, and mailing list examples for a while. All of which have been great resources, but it is nice to finally have a more complete reference.

It may sound silly, but when I received it I felt like a kid opening up a present at Christmas time. For some reason it never occurred to my non-geek family and friends that a book like this would make a great Christmas gift. Maybe they knew I would ditch them the moment I saw the book and spend the rest of the day reading and trying out sample code on the computer. (Or would that be rude? ;) Perhaps I should be grateful they did not give me some fru-fru book with a title like "A gentle introduction to the art of etiquette and social graces (for the socially inept challenged)".

Strangely, I even read the introduction of this book, which I never do! It has a few funny anecdotes about how Lowagie got started in programming. I am only up to Chapter 5, but so far I am really pleased with it. The last technical book I read was .. to put it politely .. a bit on the dry and boring side. So needless to say I am enjoying the writing style of this book much more, not to mention the loads of useful examples.

Now if only people would stop bothering me so I could get to the rest of it! ;)