Top 10 Java Programming Books from Beginner to Expert - Best of lot, Must Read

These top Java programming books are some of the good books to learn Java and I would say some of them are simply the best Java books ever published. Whenever a programmer starts learning Java programming language, the first question he asks is "Which book should I refer to learn Java?", or "What is the best book to learn Java for beginners?" or "Can you tell me some good books to learn Java?" .That itself says how important Java books are for programmers especially beginners.  Despite having so many free resources available in Java, liketutorials, online courses, tips, blogs and code examples, Java books have their own place because of two reasons:

• They are written by programmers who are the authority in the subject
• They cover the subject with more details and explanation.

These Java books are my personal favorites and whenever I get some time I prefer to read them to refresh my knowledge.

Though I have read many of them already, like I have read Effective Java almost 3 to 4 times, I have always learned something new.

They are kind of best Java books available today and equally useful for beginners, experienced and advanced Java programmers.

It doesn't matter whether you are completely new in Java or doing Java programming for 5 years, you will definitely learn a lot of new things by going through this book.

Having said that not all book is equally suitable for all programmers, for Java beginners, Head First Java is the best book to start learning and for advanced Java developer, Effective Java is the good book to start with.

10 Essential Books to Learn Java Programming

Here is my collection of Java books, which I suggest to every programmer who wants to learn Java. It contains books for both beginners and experienced programmers having 2 to 5 years of experience.

It has books to cover different areas of Java, like Core Java Fundamentals, Java Collection framework, Multithreading and Concurrency, JVM internals and Performance tuning, Design Patterns, etc.

1.Head First Java

The Head First Java covers essential Java programming knowledge about class, object, Thread, Collection, language features like Generics, Enum, variable arguments or auto-boxing, etc.

They also have some advanced sections on Swing, networking and Java IO which makes them a complete package for Java beginners. This should be your first Java book if you are learning from scratch.

In short,  the most interesting Java programming books for beginners which is equally good for intermediate Java developers as well.  If you like online courses over books then you can also check out Udemy's The Complete Java MasterClass  course, which effectively complements this book and can speed up your learning.

2.Head First Design Patterns

Head First Design Pattern is another top-class Java book from Head First lab, I guess, this is so far their best title.

When I started reading this book back in 2006, I didn't much about design patterns in Java, how they solve common problems, how to apply design patterns, what benefits they provide and all sorts of basic things but after reading this Java book I benefited immensely.

There is the first chapter on Inheritance and Composition, which is simply fantastic and promote best practices by first introducing a problem and then the solution.

They also have lots of bullet points, exercises, memory maps which help you to understand design patterns much quickly.

If you want to learn core Java design patterns and Object-oriented design principles, this is the first Java book you should refer to. Head First design pattern is written by Kathy Sierra and the team.

Btw, If you are looking for a course on GOF or object-oriented design patterns, I suggest you check out the Design Pattern Library , one of the best courses I have attended on design patterns so far.

One good news about this book is that the new edition of this book is also updated for Java SE 8, which will teach you how to develop classic GOF design patterns using Java 8 features e.g. lambda expressions and streams.

3.Effective Java

Effective Java is one of the best or top Java books in my record and most enjoyable as well. I have high regard for Joshua Bloch (writer of this book) for his contribution to the Java collection framework and Java concurrency package.

Effective Java is best for a seasoned or experienced programmer who is well versed in Java programming and wants to share their skill by following programming best practices, Java best practices and eager to listen from someone who is contributed in Java development kit.

Effective Java as book scores high on quality, content, and way of explanation. Reading this Java book is a pleasant experience.

Another important point of Effective Java is Item-based structure which breaks the whole book in small items and every Item is complete in itself, so you can read this book while traveling or short duration as well.

On contents, Effective Java is a collection of Java programming best practices ranging fromstatic factories, serialization, equals and hashcode to generics, enum and varargs and reflection.

This Java programming book almost covers every aspect of Java in a slightly different way than you are used to.

The good news about Effective Java is that, finally, after 10 years of a long wait, the Effective Java 3rd edition is coming soon, hopefully before 31st December 2017.

This edition will cover features introduced in JDK 7, 8, and 9, which was released this year in September.  It will also have a full chapter on lambdas and Joshua Bloch mention in his twitter channel that he may revise the Concurrency chapter if time permits.

I have already pre-ordered this book on Amazon and just can't wait to see it in my hand.

4.Java Concurrency in Practice

Java Concurrency in Practice is another classic from Joshua Bloch, Doug Lea, and the team. Probably the best Java book in Concurrency and multi-threading and one of the must-read for core Java developers.

The strength of Concurrency Practice in Java are:

1) This book is very detailed and captures minor details of multi-threading and concurrency as well.

2) Focus, instead of focusing on core Java classes this book focus on concurrency issues and problems like deadlock, starvation, thread-safety, race conditions and then present ways to solve them using Java concurrency classes.

This book is an excellent resource to learn and master Java concurrency package and classes like CountDownLatch, CyclicBarrier, BlockingQueue or Semaphore. This is the biggest reason I like to read this Java book and read again and again.

3) One more strong point of Concurrency practice in Java is No nonsense Examples, examples in this book are clear, concise and intelligent

4) Explanation: the book is good on explaining what is wrong and why its wrong and how to make it right which is essential for Java book to succeed.

In short, one of the best books to learn concurrency and multi-threading in Java. The content is definitely advanced from a beginner's perspective but surely, a must-read book for experienced Java programmers.

5.Java Generics and Collections

Java Generics and Collection by Naftalin and Philip Wadler from O'Reilly is another good book on Java, which I initially forgot to include in my list, but including it now as requested by many readers.

I like this book because of its content of Generics and Collections, which are core areas of Java programming language.  Strong knowledge of Java Collections and Generics are expected from an experienced programmer and these books help in that area.

This book explains each of the Collection interfaces like Set, List, Map, Queue and their implementation and compares how well they perform in a different situation.  I really loved their comparison chart at the end of each chapter, which gives you a good idea about when to use particular Java collection classes, like ArrayList, HashMap, or LinkedHashMap.

6.Java Performance from Binu John

Another good book in Java to learn about JVM internals, Garbage collection, JVM tuning, profiling, etc and I highly recommend every senior Java developer to read this book. This is also one of my personal favorites.

As we are moving gradually started from beginners level to intermediate and senior level.

Java performance Book is all about performance monitoring, profiling, and tools used for Java performance monitoring.

This is not a usual programming book, Instead, It provides details about JVM, Garbage Collection, Java heap monitoring, and profiling application.

I loved their chapter on JVM overview and it's a must-read to learn about JVM in simple language. Just remember this Java book is advanced in nature and expects that the reader has experience in Java.

Both beginners and an intermediate programmer can benefit from this book but Its good to have some Java experience under your belt before reading this book. So far the best Java book on performance monitoring.

This is another, must-read Java book if you are serious about performance in Java programming language.

Update: There are a couple of new books available in Java, which covers JDK 1.7, to find out the latest book on Java performance likeJava Performance, The Definitive Guide by Scott Oaks, which is certainly worth checking out before buying this book.

7.Java Puzzlers

Java Puzzlers is another worth reading Java book from Joshua Bloch, this time with Neal Gafter. This book is about corner cases and pitfalls in the Java programming language.

Java is more safe and secure than C++ and JVM does a good job to free the programmer from error-prone memory allocation and deallocation, but still, there Java has corner-cases which can surprise even experienced Java programmer.

This Java book presents such Java pitfalls and explains them in detail. A good Java book if you love puzzles, You can even include many of these incore Java interviews to check how deep their Java knowledge is.

I don't rate it as high as "Effective Java" and "Java Concurrency in Practice" but still, you can give it a go, particularly to check your knowledge about Java and its corner cases, which will help you to answer some of the tricky Java questions from interviews.

In order to get most of this Java book, tries to solve the puzzles by yourself and then look into explanations to make your knowledge more concrete.

8.Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design

Another good book on Java programming and design principles from the Head First series. The Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and design book can be read in conjunction with Head First Design patterns.

This book focuses on Object-oriented design principles like favor Composition over inheritance, programming for interface than implementation, DRY, etc.

One part of learning Java is writing good code and following best practices and this book is great in educating programmers about them.

Knowledge gained from this book is applicable to many object-oriented programming languages and will overall improve your understanding ofcode andOOP design principles.

9.Thinking in Java

Thinking in Java book is written by Bruce Eckel who is also the author of Thinking in C++ and he uses his unique style to teach Java concepts.

Many would agree that this is one of the best Java books and the strengths of these books are there to the point and intelligent examples. This is one of the complete books in Java and can be used as a reference as well. There is a chapter on Java memory-mapped IO from Thinking in Java which is my favorite.

I would say this is another Java book that demands space in Java programmer's shelf and must-read Java book for beginners.  If you don't like Head First teaching style and rather need a beginner Java book with plain old example style, Thinking in Java is a good choice.

It is detailed, matured and frequently updated, but, if you need more choices, you can check out thesecore Java books for beginners as well.

10. Java By Comparison: Become a Java Craftsman in 70 Examples

This is another great book for Java programmers who really want to hone their Java skills and become a Java craftsman. This is not the book about syntax and semantics but how to do real-world things in a better way. If you want to become a professional Java developer which every company wants to hire, then this book is for you.

This book is written by Simon Harrer, Jörg Lenhard, and Linus Dietz, some of the well-known names on Java and clean code circle. It's not a surprise that the book is filled with clean code advice.

If you know, one of the best ways o improve your coding skill is to compare your code with an expert programmer but not everyone gets a chance to work with experts. This book provides you that rare opportunity where you can compare your code with how a Java expert would write it and then learn from your mistakes and new discoveries.

This book provides hands-on advice to level up your coding style through small and understandable examples that compare flawed code to an improved example. In the process, you will learn handy tips and tricks, as well as common bugs an experienced Java programmer needs to know.

In short, one of the practical, hands-on and well-explained book which every Java developer should read. If you like Effective Java then I think you will love this book as well.

This was my list of top Java programming books and I would say best of a lot. I have read all the books, some of them I am still reading and a couple of them like Effective Java and Head First series, I have read a couple of times. Many programmers ask me about which books they start, which Java book they read now. I hope you will find some good Java books in this collection.

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P.S. - If you are looking for some FREE Java books which are available to read online or download as PDF, then see my other post about 10 Free Java books to learn Programming.

P.P.S. - If you are looking for great books to learn the latest version of Java like Java 8, then you should see my other post about 5 books to learn Java 8.

P.P.P.S - If you are looking for some online courses to learn Java from scratch then you can also check out this list of 10 best courses to learn Java in 2020 on Medium.