Ok it is nearly Xmas and one of partners is making excuses about not getting into the spirit of programming on the web because JAVA this and 500 other excuses.

One of them is "back in the old days with basic programming langauge and dos I could do...."

So I have been telling him to get into PHP thats as basic as you can get but still feel like a programmer for the web without going down the .net JAVA etc path.

Whilst I am good at PHP and there are 1000 tutorials on the web I want and old fashioned BOOK.

The local book shop does not have what I need and when you look at online shops you really cant a feel.

Any tips for a good THICK book that starts with <? and ends 500 pages later with ?> so to speak?

http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Web-Development-4th/dp/0672329166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257987738&sr=8-1 (1008 pp)

And, although I haven't read any of their PHP books, the O'Reilly books are always good: http://oreilly.com/php/

Mattle - thanks for that. I appreciate your input and the effort in looking it up. I will go and look further at the links.

I have always been a fan of the PHP & MySQL web development series of books. They're incredibly thorough.

Thanks everyone. Case closed. It is ordered and I appreciate your help.