I read a mess of these books. I subscribe to the Safari service put out by Tim O'Reilly and his krewe. I look at the table of contents carefully. I then read

I read a mess of these books. I subscribe to the Safari service put out by Tim O'Reilly and his krewe. I look at the table of contents carefully. I then read the whole book quickly to get oriented. At that point I make a judgement whether it's worth more time and effort. Still here? Then I reread any chapters that relate to performance, because those chapters usually give a clear view of interesting issues in the subject system. Then I do one or two of the problems / examples / demos. I do my best to avoid downloading and running them; rather I take the time to type them over; it helps me cognitively to understand what I'm doing. Then I evaluate whether the material I'm learning will help me solve current problems, or give me ideas about solving future problems, or not. I put the book in my Safari queue if it's relevant to either current or future problems. Then I go use what I've learned. I wish I could say I wrote a quick personal review of every book. But I don't. This works pretty well for me. Safari is a great way to read tons of books, because, well, "tons of books." They don't take up shelf space or have to be moved, or recycled if they turn out not to be useful.