Ivor Horton's Beginning Java, Java 7 Edition

Its a large book with over 1100 pages and I've only covered the first 150 pages so far, but found it well written with lots of examples each of which has explanatory comments. Obviously a lot more to cover, but the book seems very comprehensive and should be a good reference book when I'm finished

One star because the Kindle formatting is broken. The code samples are not correctly formatted and the diagrams are badly broken. For me this made the book unusuable and I claimed a refund. Having said that, the content I did view (the threads chapter) seemed to be of decent quality in terms of actual content rather than presentation. My criticism is not so much the content of the book, but the very poor Kindle ebook formatting. I write this as a warning to others who may be tempted to purchase the Kindle format edition of this book.

A superb introduction to Java, very comprehensive. Always good to get an alternative perspective so use this book alongside the Java Tutorials on the Oracle site and you'll have the perfect combination. I'm an 'older' guy, so I found the font size quite uncomfortable on the eyes. Therefore, I use the PDF version of the book as well. Oh, the joys of middle age!

This book would get 5 out of 5 (I have the paperback version) but as mentioned by another reviewer, the kindle formatting is broken. If this can be fixed by Amazon, then I'll change my review to 5 stars. Great book, pity this and the Version 2 Kindle books are both broken :(

good

Brilliant book

I found the structure of this book very effective for learning. No pre-requisites of the java language or even OO programming are required, though you'd certainly progress faster if you had some coding practice. For every topic that's covered, there are beautifully written clear explanations and examples. The code can be downloaded from the Wrox website to save you typing it all in. After every example, there is a How It Works section that verbosely summarises why it's been written in that way and what it's doing. At the end of every chapter, there is a summary and some exercises to complete. These exercises are the most important part. It's all very well being able to understand the chapter, but putting the information you've absorbed into practice is where the real learning begins. Solutions to the exercises can be downloaded from Wrox and there's also a forum on there for this book if you get stuck. Amazingly good value for money. I had the Java 2 version of this book and also have this version.