Personally, I prefer dead tree books, because e-books make my eyes bug out after about 10 minutes. Personally, I find reading from a monitor to be a prescription for headaches, plus it ties up valuable CPU cycles. I think paying a little more for the paperback is far cheaper than having to go to the optometrist with eye strain.
As far as what I like in a programming book, my current favorite book is Jamsa's C/C++ Bible because is doesn't tell me how to program, just gives me simple descriptions, syntax and an example for just about every function in the language. That really appeals to me in that I can basically find the syntax for any function call from looking at the index, and not have to hunt around for it. I often wish that more programming books would contain syntax help, because that is mostly what I use the books for; clearing up rat's nest in my head of different langues.
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As far as what I like in a programming book, my current favorite book is Jamsa's C/C++ Bible because is doesn't tell me how to program, just gives me simple descriptions, syntax and an example for just about every function in the language. That really appeals to me in that I can basically find the syntax for any function call from looking at the index, and not have to hunt around for it. I often wish that more programming books would contain syntax help, because that is mostly what I use the books for; clearing up rat's nest in my head of different langues.
ummm...A single shotgun shell is a whole bunch of BBs...
Back when I was doing this in college, we used a CD. You can get some pretty funky effects from spinning the disc, too.