I haven't read many myself yet, but I have read The Well Grounded Rubyist. It's an utterly superb book. The author is a real-life teacher and it really shows. He goes to great lengths to help make sure the book is as easily to digest as possible. Very VERY highly recommended, especially for those of us new to Ruby (or coming to Ruby from Rails). I started to read the Pickaxe book (Programming Ruby 1.9) but I didn't really get into it, then Ryan Bigg recommended the Well Grounded Rubyist and I was engrossed in that (I read it cover to cover!). I have restarted the Pickaxe book, though will be keeping an eye on this thread - any books that are very highly recommended might push in to my reading list before it! I also started Metaprogramming Ruby (after reading The Well Grounded Rubyist), got 30% through it then couldn't do the quizz without cheating - so think it's too much of a jump for me. Hence going back to more basics-covering texts like the Pickaxe book. I'll add more posts to this thread as and when I read more - you can't edit posts here, so please look out for further thoughts about the books I've mentioned above for an more up-to-date viewpoint. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.