Reading Bob Balaban and John Head's recent posts on Java got me back on track with my Java learning. (had a couple of vacations):) I headed on over to JavaRanch and browsed the beginner's forum for learning ideas. (Great Java forum's here) I found some useful advice on a couple books. One I've already worked through before is Head First Java by Kathy Sierra. I like this book but was hoping for another recommendation and I came up with Thinking In Java by Bruce Eckel. Checked out my fellow Domino blogger, Duffbert, for a nice review. My local library had it and I've begun reading. It's a large book at 1,400 pages but you eat an elephant one bite at a time. It begins with OOO explanation and I really liked his explanation of hidden elements of objects. There are class creators and client programmers. The class creators hide parts of their classes that are the tender insides of an object. This way the creators of the class can change this as they wish and not mess up the client programmers who are using the class. Nice explanation and very clear. I hope the rest of the book is as enlightning.