What's your craziest "IT" book, and why?

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Just for fun, I was wondering what each of you consider their 'craziest' IT related manual/book/training guide, and why exactly do you find it crazy?

Is it because the text is so dry it makes you thirsty and all you want to do is crawl in a hole and cry?

Is it due to the author and the way they add jokes and/or wacky bits of information in their books to "spice it up"?

Or is it just because the book is so HUGE?

etc...

etc...

Here goes my nomination:

The Information Security Management Handbook - Sixth Edition
By Harold Tipson and Micki Krause
Auerbach Publications

This... this thing, it's massive. The paper it uses is super thin, you can almost see through them (I know a few bibles which seem to use the same paper). The text inside seem to use a Times New Roman like font which I guess may just be a size between 4 and 5. On top of this, there's hardly any pictures in this thing.

And finally, it has just short of 3300 pages!!!

Needless to say, I still haven't finishes reading through this thing
That's my crazy book contribution of the day

(p.s. the book is great, don't get me wrong. Not very cheap either, at least over here where I bought it... but man, it's a LOT of reading for a single book).

 

I love me some Spam Letters - because its funny, and The TCP/IP Guide because its 1600 pages and ridiculously detailed.

 

Some PHP and MySQL web development one because i have never really read it properly and i don't really like programming much either. I guess that kind of makes me look crazy and not so much the book though .

 

Back in the late 70's when I first learned programming I was sent on a Fortran IV course. The course book we were issued was called the Fortran Colouring Book. It was heavily decorated with hand drawings demonstrating the language semantics and examples. It was one of the best books I ever had.

If there is one gripe I have with books these days and that's the publishing mantra "more pages is better". I've got books almost approaching 1,500 pages. The trend is that if you are going to charge someone £35 or more for a book you'd better gives lots of pages and that does not necessarily translate into quality. I cut my C teeth on Kernighan & Richie's C Programming book. That was a seminal book that proved you could write a book with far fewer pages and still demonstrate all the core features of the language.

 

I am currently reading a book called Hacking The IT Cube. It's absolutely brilliant. Utterly hilarious in places.

Definitely suggest this one for anyone who works in the IT industry. The author is the IT equivalent of David Brent with the way he describes individual IT trades.

Well worth a read!

 

The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley - link

 

I remember seeing a "Word for Dummies" (can't remember for which version but it was a few years back - maybe '97).

In the chapter on MailMerge it said something like :

1) Don't
2) Really, don't - it doesn't work
3) oh, if you really must do it then follow this

Seemed amusing at the time

 

My oddest was "Real men use DOS"

My most cherished is https://www.clive.nl/english-uk/zx-spectrum-basic-programming