I’ll admit I’m a freak, but I find a well written programming book as gripping as a well written novel, and have been known to sit down and read them cover to cover. (PofEAA was a page turner!) I’m about a third of the way through Lucene in Action, and it’s excellent: easy to read, compelling examples, deep insight, generally good stuff. A good tech book leaves your mind percolating with the all cool new things you can do with your new knowledge, and LiA is that kind of book.

I’m reading it in the contexts of Ferret and while there are some minor API differences (no Hits class in Ferret but it adds an Index::Index convenience class), for the most part the knowledge is directly applicable.