I first read this book about a year ago. That time, I was using a lot of C++ and Java. And I thought that Graham was being overly biased with Lisp. Then I starter learning Ruby, Python and also some Perl. Rereading some chapters tonight showed me just how true what Graham says. There is an increasing trend toward languages that can indeed be shaped to fit the application. Ruby on rails is a good example of this.
And finally, I am going to take the plunge and see what Lisp is all about.

Collect, process, organize, do and review. Those are the basic steps!

May not be the most instructive grammar book out there since it is mostly based on British grammer. Nonetheless it is more humorous than the others that I have read.

Quite an interesting book if you are into secret societies and things such as that. Also particularly entertaining if you have some predilection about tales on the Roman Catholic; Dan Brown seems to favor these kinds of stories.

This is one book that is constantly being referred to. I know that you are able to get most of the code snippets online but Ian does a good job of organizing them together. Moreover, it is always easier to have a book that you can flip around while coding. In fact as you flip the pages, you discover some new thing that you might not have known. I would not recommend it to anyone who does not know Java. But if you know a fair amount of Java then this book will be useful when you try do more intermediate and advanced things.

So far this book has been rather instructive. It does assume that you have read a fair amount of “turgid” literature and want to find how you can avoid those things. It would be best if any aspring technical writers out there read this book before trying to read a textbook that reads just like English literature.

One of the recommended books to learning Ruby. Skimmed through the book and it has a nice overall tone to it; neither too intimidating nor too simplistic.
I doubt that you need to read this book to master Ruby. Use this book more as a reference on the Ruby way of doing things.

In my opinion, one of the best books to learn python when you already know other languages like java and c++. It skips the details of loops, variables, etc and brings you up to speed on the powerful features of python that you want to use.

Two of the anime I’ve been following – Bleach and Gundam Seed Destiny – have feature songs by her. It is pretty unusual for two concurrent series to feature songs by the same artist from the same album.

Go read on the links from http://brevity.org/misc/bestswi.html.
That is what I did. Of course by doing so, you miss some of Joel’s comments and edits. Joel is an above-average writer so the $17 might be a decent amount to spend.