My advice: Read the good parts version. Then read The Princess Bride so that you know the joke behind the title Javascript: The Good Parts. Then read the defini

My advice: Read the good parts version. Then read The Princess Bride so that you know the joke behind the title Javascript: The Good Parts. Then read the definitive guide. I have the definitive guide, and I'm told it's really good, and I will state that it definitively occupies lots of space on my shelf and that I definitively plan to read it someday. Meanwhile, I've only actually opened it a handful of times, mostly to look up some API function or other. Crockford, on the other hand, I have actually read, and he's really good.