Which is the best book out there to learn Linq, including Linq to Entities?

Question

I heard lots of reviews on the book Linq in Action, but it does not cover Linq to Entities.
Please provide your feedback on the books you may have read.

Answer 1

LINQ in Action is a good book for understanding the principles of LINQ, and LINQ-to-SQL in particular.

C# in Depth is good for understand how LINQ works at the language level, including query syntax, extension methods and expression trees.

EF... trickier. One problem is that it is likely to change quite a bit between now and the next version due to the "thunderdome" scenario.

Answer 2

I have both but APress's Pro Linq is probably the one that I use most on a day to day basis. Unfortunately there's no coverage of Linq to Entities in the first (current?) edition.

Answer 3

Check this, it may help till a good book appear: http://weblogs.asp.net/zeeshanhirani/archive/2008/12/05/my-christmas-present-to-the-entity-framework-community.aspx

Answer 4

The LINQ in Action book is pretty good. I've supplemented it with the Programming Entity Framework book (978-0596520281) which is pretty in-depth.

I found these books to be quite complementary. The LINQ in Action book gives you a good ground and, where you really need some meat (i.e. LINQ to Entities) the other text does the job.

Answer 5

I've recently been reading an early draft of Entity Framework in Action; it seems to be along the right lines, but isn't complete yet.

At this point in time, I'd be wondering which books are covering the VS2010/.NET 4.0 version of Entity Framework, as there are considerable changes afoot. I don't know whether the above book will publish against 3.5 SP1 or 4.0, but it stands a better chance of being up to date than the existing dead trees.