This isn't a formal book review per se, more of an FYI, but I wanted to share a quick note about one of the best books I've read yet on Node. If you are interested in learning Node, and specifically want to learn a framework at the same time, I highly recommend "Web Development with Node and Express" by Ethan Brown. The book does an amazing job of introducing both Node and Express at the same time. I've mentioned it before, but it was Express that really made Node seem useful to me.

I had sat through more than a couple Node presentations that showed building a simple web server, and while it seemed cool, it also seemed highly impractical. Seeing Express in action though made a huge difference for me. Express has gone through some pretty big changes recently and this book uses the most recent edition. I've written about Node and Express before, but it was a good year or so ago so this book was a great help for me in getting up to speed with how it has changed.

This book covers everything related to building a web site. You've got basics (adding views), you've got form handling, you've got form handling with file uploads, etc. It covers sessions and database persistence. It uses the best (well, one of the best) templating languages, Handlebars. It also includes unit testing from the very beginning. This book is so darn good that I plan on picking up a physical copy so I can have it nearby. (I got an ebook version for free.) I really can't recommend it enough and if one of your New Year's Resolutions is to learn a new language, you really couldn't do any better than this book.

If you want to check it out before you buy, you can download a sample chapter (PDF) first. If you end up picking up the book, let me know what you think in the comments below.