Christian’s book – not just Brent’s

I like to joke with Christian Bolton (@christianbolton) about the time when he got accused of claiming to have written Brent’s book. Of course, he didn’t write Brent’s book – Brent wrote some of Christian’s. And it’s an excellent book.

For a start, I should point out that I know several of the authors. Christian’s a great guy who lives about 2 miles from my grandparents. Amongst the other authors, there are fellow Arsenal supporter James Rowland-Jones, presenter-extraordinaire and exceptional (if you vote) DBA Jonathan Kehayias, and some guy called Brent who used to work for a consulting firm which I hope LobsterPot is never like (Brent’s a good friend too). So I’m sure the others that I don’t know (Justin, Cindy & Steven) are great people, and I’ll look forward to meeting them.

The book concerned is Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals & Troubleshooting, and I have to confess that it sat on my bookshelf for too long waiting to be read – I’d looked through some parts, but not given it a proper read, getting distracted by other things. But it’s actually very good, and not just because I could hear the author’s voices as I read it (making up ‘appropriate’ voices for the authors I didn’t know – who would’ve guessed Cindy sounds Glaswegian!).

There are definitely a lot of books about SQL Server available in bookshops these days, and it can be hard to pick the better ones. My bookshelf includes books by recognised SQL authors such as Kalen Delaney, Louis Davidson, Paul Nielsen, and others, and Christian’s contribution is certainly not out of place there.