Over at Second Life Insider, Akela Talamasca noted another SL book out, Scripting Recipes for Second Life by Jeff Heaton.

Since it’s only about $13 with my employee discount I’ll probably end up picking this one up and do a write-up when I’ve read through it.

The other day at work, I decided to check out what Second Life related books we might have in the store. I received a bit of a shock when I found that we had not only had, Second Life: The Official Guide and The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life, but four other SL books!

• Second Life Travel Guide
• Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse by Peter Ludlow and Mike Wallace.
• Second Life for Dummies by Sarah Robbins and Mark Bell
• Second Life: A Guide to Success for the Serious Resident by Brian White

Most of them have not been published ye, but I’m rather interested in checking a few out.

The big surprise for me though was the Herald book. That may be due to the fact that I’ve not subscribed to the Herald’s RSS feed for close to a year now, Still, considering their somewhat “notable(?)” position in the SL blogging community, one would think that someone would have mentioned it.

Here’s to these books being better than the other two that I’ve done write-ups on so far, though I may give The Official Guide a second chance since a 2nd edition of it will be coming out this early in 2008.

Once again, I was perusing around at Barnes and Noble when I came upon The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life. Being bored as I was I picked it up and flipped through it a bit.

However, I did not have much time to actually read through a good portion of the book, but it seemed like it covered most of the major in-world bases pretty well. There were a few locals that grabbed my eye, but the majority were places that have already been publicized.

I did take a quick look to find out if the Shelter was listed in there and, unsurprisingly, it was. What was surprising was that it was listed under the name, The Shelter In Exile! Okay, I can see how that could have been mistaken considering the book was probably final-drafted around the time that Exile was still steaming along. But then I turn the page and see a photo of the Isabel Shelter, labeled, still, the Shelter In Exile. It made me wonder how they got the photo while still getting the name wrong.

Aside, from the Shelter beef, my verdict of the book is the same as the Official Guide, good if you are very new, but pretty useless for regulars.

Well, I just got back from my favorite RL hangout, Barnes & Noble. As I was perusing the aisles at random, I came across the video game guides section and, to my surprise, they had a copy of Second Life: The Official Guide in stock. Having read about it in multiple blogs across the net, I had been mildly interested in its content, so I grabbed it off the shelf and sat down in the aisle to scan through it.

Overall, I have to say that I was fairly impressed by the quality of the information put into the book. Plus, it was even more fun seeing photos of people I’ve met and, in some cases, know published in book form.

From a fairly general stand-point, I would say that the book would be a great investment for anyone who wants to learn about the world of SL with the least amount of hassle. However, if you are a fairly established resident (i.e. you’ve regularly been in SL since at least summer ‘06), DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! The $35 USD that you would pay for this could be spent on much better things, such as L$9,299. ;)

Most of the information that is presented in the book is readily available from most of the main SL-related blogs or the SL History Wiki. Sure, you may have to do a little bit of searching and rummaging through the archives, but it’s all there. Heck, it’s how I learned what I know about SL’s history and community even before I joined!

My other beef with the book is its little burbs, mainly in the section about making Linden dollars, that are basically classified for writers to models. With the way SL changes, those positions are sure to be filled by now. How many times will the people who have offers in the book receive an IM from someone about a job they needed filled a year ago?

To close on a happy note, I was glad to see the Shelter (main original locale) mentioned in the places to visit section and it was nice to see a small bio on Frogg Marlowe in there too.

Conclusion: Buy it if you don’t want to spend a bit of time searching for SL’s history or fun places, but don’t buy it if you’ve been in-world for a few months because about 70% of the book will be useless to you.