--- title: "Book of the month: May" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/1/book-of-the-month-may.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/1/book-of-the-month-may.html" published: "2004-05-01T15:04:00" updated: "2004-05-01T15:04:00" tags: [".Net Original", "Recommended books"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I've updated my current book of the month and the list of book recommendations. I've also added a “recommended books“ category to my blog, for future reference. I'd love to hear your book recommendations. Book of the…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Book of the month: May By Roy Osherove May 1, 2004 In [.Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original), [Recommended books](https://osherove.com/blog/category/recommended-books) **Historical article** · Originally published May 1, 2004; technical details may be outdated. I've updated my current book of the month and [the list of book recommendations.](http://dotnetweblogs.com/rosherove/story/6802.aspx) I've also added a “recommended books“ category to my blog, for future reference. I'd love to hear your book recommendations. Book of the month for this month is the one that didn't make it last month(hence I'll recycle my post from last month about it): [.NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference Vol 1,](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321154894/iserializable-20) by [Brad Abrams](http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/). ![Book of the month: .NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference, Volume 1: Base Class Library and Extended Numerics Library, 1/e](https://osherove.com/img/wb/93349290_images.amazon.com_images_P_0321154894.01._PE32_PI_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg) I really like this quote from Brad about the book: _I tried to maintain a very minium level of editorial discretion on the annotations. My goal was to get folks that were heavily involved in the design of the BCL to comment candidly from their point of view. There are no annotations that are wrong technically, but that does not mean they are all the Microsoft official position_ [Brad is also sharing stuff from the book on his blog](http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/category/4449.aspx). Very interesting. I'd say this book is a must if you want to deeply understand some of the reasons and logic (and sometimes mistakes) that went into creating the base class library of the .Net framework. I'm one of those who believes the deeper you are aware of what's underneath, the better you can deal with problems and understand why things happen, and thus deal with them more easily. ## More in .Net Original [All posts in .Net Original](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net-original) - May 7, 2004 ### [My favorite Tech-Ed quote, and what you need to know about FABRIQ](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/7/my-favorite-tech-ed-quote-and-what-you-need-to-know-about-fa.html) - May 7, 2004 ### [Back from Tech-Ed, and another Israeli .Net blogger found.](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/5/7/back-from-tech-ed-and-another-israeli-net-blogger-found.html) - Apr 29, 2004 ### [TrimEnd() Vs. SubString()](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/4/29/trimend-vs-substring.html) - Apr 29, 2004 ### [Why is VS.Net Add-in architecture so overly complicated?](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/4/29/why-is-vsnet-add-in-architecture-so-overly-complicated.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/