I just ordered Ruby in Practice and Rails 3 in Action from Manning(they had a one day only 45% off promo).
The Rails 3 book won’t actually be coming out for a while, but in what I think is an ingenious publishing move, people who preorder can look at drafts of chapters as the book is worked on. It reminds me a little of how Lawrence Lessig is doing the next edition of his books. Except of course totally different.
The thing that makes them similar is the added participation of future readers. It isn’t that this is a new idea. People have been soliciting comments on publications for as long as they have been around. Technology just changes the timescale and the scale of the projects.
Anyway, cool.
Right now, I have Ruby in Practice and through the fourth chapter of Merb–Rails 3 in Action. More later.
Sweet.