A common reoccurring question on around the web is “which book should I get”? The answer is always the same old top 10 from Amazon with affiliate links like JavaScript: The Good Parts, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide and Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja.

While these are good books, and even JavaScript: The Good Parts is still relevant today, even if we’ve gotten some extra syntax sugar in the newer editions of ECMAScript the ideas these books present are still solid.

However, we wanted to showcase some of the lesser known contenders, now for full disclosure the above links were affiliate links with Amazon, but the links below will not be and in no shape or form will we benefit on you checking them out, in-fact all the books are available for free online.

The JavaScript Way

The JavaScript Way by Baptiste Pesquet is aimed at beginners, it doesn’t really even acknowledge that ECMAScript 5 ever existed which is refreshing. It goes through the basics of the language, introduces object oriented and functional programming and some basic DOM concepts.

Currently the book is marked as around half way finished, the chapters yet to be written seem to be on Node but the chapters that are there are pretty solid. Since it’s a work in progress the book is available as pay what you want on Leanpub, the source book is also available via GitHub.

All in all, it’s a solid introduction for someone who isn’t already a developer.