I think I'm about to add a new data filtering rule: "If Malcolm Gladwell writes it, I read it". His September piece,
The Ketchup Conundrum is interesting both for the explanations of how mustard/ketchup taste, and the process which people have used to create and market these condiments.

When I went to dinner with the Sun folks the other night, one of the things that we talked about was the process of writing a book. The formerly unidentified folks in our party were Rich Teer, author of Solaris Systems Programming, his wife Jenny, and Sean Ross. Apparently the Teer's have had a long multiyear slog to get Rich's book done, and today Dave Johnson mentioned that he is working on a book for Manning. Dave is on a tight schedule, which was the same situation for me on my book. It seems that writing a book indicates that you've been through a particular kind of ordeal. Or does it? Guillaume Laforge recently described the welcome package he got for his book on Groovy. I certainly didn't get that kind of a welcome from Wiley/Wrox. I suppose it's just another example of why O'Reilly is one of the top publishers in the computer book space.