Hi Adrian_Hoyle welcome to the forum
That is a question only you can bast answer.
True, book titles that have “Introduction”, “Beginning” etc in them are a good clue, but there is a better way.
AFAIK all SitePoint books have a Preface, and in the Preface there is “Who Should Read This Book” and “What’s in This Book”.
For example JQUERY: NOVICE TO NINJA has
You should already have intermediate to advanced HTML and CSS skills, as jQuery uses CSS-style selectors to zero in on page elements. Some rudimentary programming knowledge will be helpful to have, as jQuery - despite all its clever abstractions - is still based on JavaScript
In other words, if you don’t have “rudimentary programming knowledge” the book might be a bit of a chore for you and it would likely be better for you to put the book aside until you do have “rudimentary programming knowledge”
Also there are different “types” of books,
- educational: eg. theoretical concepts
- instructional: eg. how to do this tutorial
- reference: eg. documentation
IMHO it is a good idea to keep the reference type book handy for when you want to find something specific about something quickly.
Tutorials are good in that they walk you through a process, but the “creations” are usually an example of something particular and cover what is needed for that “creation”.
The educational books are a good place to start, but some find them a bit “dry”.
My usual approach when learning a new language is
- I give a quick skim through the reference to get an overview of “what’s there” but don’t worry about trying to understand much of it.
- I read the educational, skimming over anything I don’t think I’d be that interested in learning about right away but reading more carefully anything I think I would be interested in knowing.
- work my way though a tutorial or more to get some “hands on” experience and test myself to see if I have the knowledge needed.