Odom Books and their differences

chronos42

I used Odom's ICND1 book as one of my primary study tools for the ICND1 and passed nicely. Loved the book. Everything was well organized, easy to understand, and pretty cleanly put together.

Odom's ICND2 book, however...I'm a third of the way through it, and it's almost like much of it was written by an entirely different person. Many of the organization choices are questionable, the methods of presenting the information feel very different, and the book is absolutely chock-full of errors (and I have the fifth printing!). It's like no one even bothered to read through the thing end-to-end before printing.

Am I the only one who's noticed this? I wouldn't say the differences are night and day, but they're definitely...high noon and late dusk.

What do you guys think?

Node Man

When I was new to this, I loved the Odom books, and all the official Cisco books. Now after a few exams, I think Odom and the official books are very verbose for what the exams cover. For educational purposed Odom is awesome. But it does have alot of extra content.

When I took the prior ICND2 exam, i thought it was a highly polished book. But when i took the new ICND2 exam, i thought the Odom book was very rough and needed alot of editing. Almost like it was crammed through the publication process. But other than that I remain a fan of Odom.

chronos42

Agreed, it seems very rough. It's like with these new books (well, 2013), he took his time with the first one, but the ICND2 book seems like he rushed it, and possibly passed off a lot of the sections to someone else who isn't nearly as careful or as well-structured as he is.

I do still love the official Cisco books though, and will likely go with them for the CCNP as well unless I find some overwhelmingly compelling case not to.

Bryando

I'm reading the same book right now and I'm on page 303. Anthony Sequeira is a contributing author (Seen on page iv). I did read the first book and they do seem different.

Params7

I just made it through the 2nd STP chapter and already noticed some typos/mistakes (for example, Pg.54 - 2nd last paragraph - shouldn't that say Forward Delay timer instead of MaxAge(15 seconds)? )

Maybe it won't be a bad idea to read through Lammle's ICND2 book also to get a better perspective. I loved Odom's ICND1 book though.

Bryando

Not to mention poor English. Not that mine is the bestest.

chronos42

Bryando wrote: »

I'm reading the same book right now and I'm on page 303. Anthony Sequeira is a contributing author (Seen on page iv). I did read the first book and they do seem different.

Maybe that's the difference. It's a shame, really. This book will do the job for me, but I liked the feel of the last one so much more.

Bryando

Check this out! CCNA Routing and Switching ICND2 200-101 Official Cert Guide

Updates tab an then click on Errata link.

CCIE Wanna Be

Bryando wrote: »

Check this out! CCNA Routing and Switching ICND2 200-101 Official Cert Guide

Updates tab an then click on Errata link.

Thanks for this, even though I passed this would have been useful to have before the exam, I guess I should have Google'd it.