==> "Silverlight 4 Unleashed" and "Pro Silverlight 4"
I've read almost all of the Silverlight 4 Books. I found that Laurent's "Silverlight 4 Unleashed" complements Matthew MacDonald's "Pro Silverlight 4" VERY well. If you are not an experienced Silverlight developer, purchasing this book or the ebook version entitles you to a free pdf copy of "Silverlight 2 Unleashed" which should serve as a good introductory book, but Matt MacDonald's book serves as a fairly thorough introduction - if you read that followed by "Silverlight 4 Unleashed," I think you're in for a treat. Matthew MacDonald's book is very thorough and serves as an excellent reference. "Silverlight 4 Unleashed," Laurent Bugnion's book, builds on examples across chapters. It reinforces and adds structure to what you learned in "Pro Silverlight 4". As a bonus, it's one of the only notable Silverlight books I've found to have decent coverage on the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) as well as several other topics. "Silverlight 4 Unleashed" also has great coverage on MVVM as does "Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 4" which Matt MacDonald will recommend - one of his Apress brothers, but I feel the recommendation is well deserved.
Other Silverlight 4 books I would recommend are, as just mentioned, "Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 4," by Chris Anderson - the style has a really nice flow to it...it really holds your attention and working with the Business Application template gives you a great feel for MVVM design (you may really benefit from this book if you first watch Ian Griffith's 8 part series, found here: [...]).
As an added bonus, all of the Silverlight authors I have mentioned here and below have been amazingly responsive and very helpful when I have contacted them via E-mail or even @Twitter. The other authors I mention are authors I have simply not tried to contact as of yet.
Further Reading (+ supplemental, but not directly related to Silverlight):
I. For the Business Intelligence Developer:
==> Bart Czernicki's "Silverlight 4 Business Intelligence"
There's only one book I know of geared specifically towards the Silverlight Business Intelligence developer, but fortunately it's great! Bart Czernicki's (dude, change your name it's difficult to spell :P) "Silverlight 4 Business Intelligence" is the book to read.
If you plan to develop with Silverlight and you're looking to get into Business Intelligence, you're better off familiarizing yourself with Silverlight before reading this book.
If you plan to develop Business Intelligence solutions, but you're not sure what tools you want to start with, you may be better of reading this book first. For what it's worth, I believe Silverlight 4 is the best B.I. solution on the market for anyone running Windows, Mac or Linux although the Linux item and Moonlight deserve further discussion which you will find later in this section (developement, at the moment, is best done in Visual Studio / Blend - although VS2010 is pretty powerful and you don't necessarily need Expression Blend...but it will save you a lot of time unless you're familiar with linear algebra (matrix transforms) and multivariate calculus (gradients, etc..)..if those subjects make you cringe, Blend has come to save the day so no worries...if you want to take it on, but need a math primer, I have some suggestions below under my graphics and animation section).
I'm primarily a .NET developer, but I have meticulously considered the other technologies currently available for delivering Business Intelligence solutions (primarily focused on a dashboard model). It enabled me to create an entire business intelligence solution for a $3 Billion (+ then some) company... single-handedly and I'm honestly not showing off - integration capabilities are just that simple especially if you're using WCF RIA services. Once SQL Server 2011 is released, it's likely to be even easier - the next Entity Framework release will work with SSAS! Hosting is cheap, you don't need anything special...you could host it from a Linux server if you wanted...don't believe me? - create a test Business Application template project (no need to add anything - it should already work with the built in functionality) and save it as whatever you want. Open the default.html page and watch the application run. If you want to actually use a Silverlight application on a Linux machine, you will need the Moonlight plugin. No word on what's going on there, but I suspect we'll hear more in the days to come surrounding the Silverlight 5 beta release (details surrounding the recent Novell acquisition are foggy, but it's likely that Microsoft got a hold of the Mono.NET and Moonlight projects / patents). I'm learning HTML5 for reasons of cross-platform compatibilities, but I'm pretty sure the two techologies will not clash head on but will, rather, co-exist...dare I say...in harmony. Anyways...read Bart's book if you want more reasons (his blog also has great coverage on HTML5 - you can conveniently search through blog articles to find topics of interest: [...]).
==> Brian Larson's "Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008"
On an unrelated note, if you're looking to get into Business Intelligence, I can't recommend this book enough: "Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2008" by Brian Larson. Not only does this book start you off with a solid foundation, but it is also insultingly simple to read...in a good way - you walk away with a solid set of skills while having excellent examples to use when explaining difficult concepts to business users...just as the business analyst needs to translate business requirements to something that's easier for us programmers to consume, we must do the same for our for our fellow business users (of course it's a lot easier if you actually do have that BA buffer).
II. Graphics and Animation (understanding the math)
==> Charles Petzold's "3D Programming for Windows
Three-Dimensional
Graphics Programming
for the Windows
Presentation Foundation"
Although this book is directed at a WPF audience, I would consider it a staple food to any Silverlight or WPF developer's diet (unless you're familiar with Linear Algebra...but even then it could serve as a good refresher). It's very well prepared and intuitively explains the fundamental concepts you need to know if you're going to be working with animations or transforms. This book will not only give you a new perspective, but it will also teach you about perspectives :P This is a good book to read after you're already familiar with Silverlight...so you don't waste your time reading sections that deal primarily with WPF, but even those that use only functions available in WPF can provide insight into how you would attain the same result in Silverlight.
If you decide to go out and buy Mr. Petzold's book, I would strongly recommend buying it directly through O'Reilly. I don't know how their customer service is, but that's because I've never had to contact them. I've been disappointed with the Customer service from Sam's Publishing and Apress (ABSOLUTELY NO REFLECTION ON THE AUTHORS!)
For more in depth mathematical coverage, you may be interested in reading a good Linear Algebra book (I'm a big fan of David Poole's "Linear Algebra A Modern Introduction" ... and you can go with a used first edition if you're teaching yourself...from my understanding most of what has changed is the teaching tools for instructors...save yourself a lot of money)
The difficulty is that Silverlight 5 is supposedly going to be lower level than XNA (surprisingly considering WP7 uses a SL/XNA hybrid approach) ...so it's unclear what "lower-level" means... DirectX? Your guess is as good as mine - you may be better off learning a good graphics technology for now and then going lower level if you really need to...I'm a math geek so I just happen to like linear algebra...possibly too much so.
FINALLY:
There is one book I have not read, but I have read only good reviews about it: "Silverlight 4 in Action" by Pete Brown. If I get a chance to read it, I will be sure to ammend this review.
