The Best of Make book is out and it’s a fun read. If you’re an obsessive geek head with a compulsion to create useful artifacts which wobble, vibrate, glow and…well…geek at you all day long. Many of the 75 projects may not be that useful, but they’re definitely F.U.N. and they’ll earn you credit down at the next LAN party all right, no question. You’ll need a good understanding of electronics to cope with the more advanced projects, so be prepared to brush up on your diodes and voltages before you start.

The book does really well to deliver graphical, clear and well thought out instruction on the how-tos, and there are one or two projects in there, like the pinball restoration which are dear to my heart (I used to own a full sized Bally pinball, and loved every second of it, even though it was LOUD!) This would make a great gift for the engineer in your life, just remember to gift wrap a soldering iron in there with it too. $34.99/£21.99.

 After two years, MAKE has become one of most celebrated new magazines to hit the newsstands, and certainly one of the hottest reads. If you’re just catching on to the MAKE phenomenon and wonder what you’ve missed, this book contains the best DIY projects from the magazine’s first ten volumes — a surefire collection of fun and challenging activities going back to MAKE’s launch in early 2005.