Beginner's Guide to Game Animation Programming

Very good, with a few caveats. The core material is strong.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. A good addition to a technical library, as long as you know what you are buying.

A genuinely enjoyable read that also taught me a great deal.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. A few of the examples could be more realistic, but the underlying points come across clearly. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. Worth the money and the reading time, without hesitation.