Volume 1 of Essential .NET, by Don Box, is a good book to read when you start to feel comfortable with the .NET Framework. You'll be cruising along with the first chapters, reading things that you already know, for the most part, with interesting new details here and there. Then you'll hit some stuff you really don't know much about, and you'll learn some really cool stuff about .NET. After that, you'll start skimming, because you'll arrive at stuff that you just don't care to know that much about yet, and you'll realize that you'll have to read the book again down the road.

At least, that's how it went for me. I cruised through the first six chapters, though there was certainly some new and interesting stuff in there that I didn't know, particularly near the end of the sixth chapter, where I finally learned how I'd do asynchronous programming with delegates. I started to bog down in chapter seven, though, and tread lightly over messages and domains. The stuff on security was interesting, but I'll definitely have to revisit that area a few times before I get cozy.

All in all, I enjoyed the book in much the same way that I enjoyed another of his books, Essential COM. He certainly does have a “terse writing style,” as he puts it, but it is quite readable considering the fountain of information that's being communicated. I quite recommend the book -- at least read it until you learn something new.