Never Put "Bible" In the Title of Your Book

Among various other gift cards I received this Christmas, I got one from Barnes & Noble. I love books of all kinds... so I stopped by a store yesterday to peruse through the isles. As it turns out, I didn't buy any, but I did spend a while looking. My stack of unread books is still pretty high, and so I decided I needed to shorten the stack before I bought more. I always go through the section of the store that has programming books to see if anything catches my eye. The store at Mayfair has unfortunately decided to shrink that section more and more every time I go... I guess I'll be getting even more of my technical books from Amazon now.

Anyway... one title caught my eye in particular... and not because I was interested in the subject matter anymore: Standard C++ Bible. I don't write C++ anymore, though I used to do a lot of it. What caught my eye was the title. I would never buy a book... ever... that had "Bible" in the title... except maybe one. As far as technical books go... if you have to put "Bible" in the title, then it isn't one. Technical bibles are known as such because of their good information and well known authors. They're the types of books that are known simply by their author's last names. This is the C++ bible... and "Bible" is not in the title.

This actually reminds of a Friend's episode (as sadly many things do). It's the one where Monica has recently broken up with Richard, and gets a message on her answering machine from him, but doesn't know if it's old or new. She ends up leaving a message on his machine and ends it with "I'm breezy". Joey then tells her... "Hey, you can't say you're breezy. That totally negates the breezy!". This may in fact be the only time in the history of the show where Joey used the word "negates"... and is very much out of character for him. Anyway... I digress. You can't put "Bible" in the title of the book... it totally negates the holiness of your writing.