If you want to learn (x)HTML and CSS, you need a book that teaches you thoroughly. The best book I’ve seen is HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition by Elizabeth Castro. The book was previously published under the title HTML 4 for the World Wide Web, Fifth Edition. It teaches (X)HTML and CSS in an easy to understand way, and it works great as a reference book too. It’s organized well, and explained nicely. There’s no reason not to know (X)HTML and CSS. Don’t rely on a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. They don’t work anywhere near as well as good old hand-coded (X)HTML. Learn it.

Tamora Pierce is an author who has written tons of books set in a fantasy realm known as Tortall. Terrier is the latest of them, featuring a better character and more interesting storyline. The setting is a few hundred years previous to any of the other books, tying in with the history of a character mentioned in an earlier book unrelated to Terrier. In Terrier, Beka Cooper is a trainee for the Provost’s Guard, the law enforcement organization in Tortall. The book deals with the finding of a mass murderer who strikes several times during the book…and is hiding in plain site. It takes awhile to figure out who the “Shadow Snake” is, but you can figure it out if you think right.

Terrier is one of Tamora Pierce’s best books (not to mention one of the longest). Some of her earlier ones were kind of…bleh. One thing I don’t like about Terrier is it’s lack of magic. What’s a fantasy book without tons of magic? Some of Pierce’s books are loaded with magic, though personally I still think Terrier is better (it still can’t compete with Harry Potter though ).

Read Minerva66 of BookAdvice.net’s take.