Which books are good to start with LINQ. It would be helpful if the book can cover from basics to Intermediate level.
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4in addition to getting a book, check out LinqPad. lets you mess around with linq w/o having to build an entire program. it's neet. – Muad'Dib May 16 '11 at 13:53
5 Answers
I'm not sure how long a book recommendation question will hang around here, answers may be merged with an existing community wiki question on recommended .NET books (I'm sure there is one) - however, what I might suggest, though lacking in descriptive content and focusing directly on practice, is:
Further:
- This answer to another question recommends Essential Linq
- And another adds recommendations for C# In Depth, Linq In Action
- Yet another suggestion from here is Pro Linq
- Lastly, and credit to @Laurent, is Reimplementing LINQ to Objects

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The Jon Skeet's "Reimplementing LINQ" post suite give a very good overview about what the philosophy of LINQ is if you talk rather c# than another natural language ;) https://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2011/02/23/reimplementing-linq-to-objects-part-45-conclusion-and-list-of-posts.aspx – Larry May 16 '11 at 13:56
I would recommend C# 4.0 in a Nutshell which has several chapters covering LINQ and PLINQ. Additionally it is a really useful reference on several other topics such as threading and TPL as well.
Following that I would recommend Jon Skeet's series on how to implement LINQ as it gives a great insight into why LINQ is constructed the way it is.

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I got a lot of useful info Pro Linq from Joseph rattz
I have the C#2008 version, seems there is a newer version for 2010 on the market as well.

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I would definitely say Jon Skeet's C# In Depth. LINQ actually builds on several techniques - anonymous delegates, extension methods, iterators - so getting a feel for all of them is important. I recommend the Skeet book wholeheartedly. And he has about a billion points on StackOverflow.

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My development team (include myself) have all learned using Programming Microsoft LINQ by Microsoft Press.
What I found particuarly useful is that it does not jump too quickly into the LINQ-to-SQL topics and so by the time you arrive at that particular topic you have a full appreciation of what the technology can do rather than just seeing it as a data entity framework.

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