Author: Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russon
Publisher: MS Press, 2007
Pages: 240
ISBN: 978-0735623910
Aimed at: .NET developers new to LINQ
Rating: 4
Pros: Simple and clear coverage
Cons: It really is introductory in nature
Reviewed by: Dave Wheeler

LINQ, or Language-Integrated Query, is new, exciting and likely to be the focus of a hefty chunk of the .NET developer community in the coming months: the thought of simple and unified data access coding is appealing to anyone who’s fed up with writing ADO.NET or System.Xml code. With the imminent release of .NET Framework 3.5, which will include LINQ, developers need a rapid introduction to this brave new world, and this book will provide it for them. The book is well structured, initially providing coverage of the language changes that have been introduced to support LINQ before looking at the different LINQ modes themselves: the writing is clear and the book is also easy to follow.

The book is introductory in nature, and there is no deep analysis of how the code that you generate with LINQ performs, but the book is no worse for that. LINQ is very new to many developers and thus a concise introduction will satisfy their immediate needs.
So, if you want a quick to read, relatively cheap, but ultimately introductory book on LINQ, look no further than this.