Ruby books to read in approximate order

ruby_books.txt

1. The Humble Little Ruby Book
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       http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/ Free online book

1. The Little Book of Ruby
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       http://www.sapphiresteel.com/The-Little-Book-Of-Ruby Free online book
       Both are free, short, and easy to read.  
       The humble book is also pretty entertaining, so I recommend that when folks aren't quite sure they 
       want to learn Ruby.

1. Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby
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       If you'd like a really weird book that covers lots of Ruby and sundry other topics:  
       http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/ which is also free, except you pay a small mental fee

1. RubyMonk
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       If you don't mind paying a small monetary fee (after 2 free books) you should checkout:
       https://rubymonk.com/ <-- pretty neat, thanks Dipti

2. The Ruby Programming Language, Flanagan & Matz
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       The canonical text on the Ruby language, not 
       exactly an easy or entertaining reading, more of a reference.  I hesitate to recommend it if 
       someone isn't already interested in the language.  I think you can give yourself some ruby 
       programming tasks instead of reading this text, or better yet, in conjunction with it.

3. Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby:  An Agile Primer
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       I actually read Metaprogramming Ruby first, and it changed my programming life, seriously, but 
       reading this text I think is more important, as just getting through chapter 3 will teach you all
       sorts of techniques to make your Ruby code resilient to future changes, changes from external code 
       or even your own code and/or requirements.  Change-resilient code is good for everyone. I have not
       finished this book yet, but already love it.  Update:  Chapter 7 was also enlightening and I'm 
       immediately able to apply what I learned there too.

4. Metaprogramming Ruby:  Program Like the Ruby Pros
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       Like I said, changed my Ruby programming life.  There is some amazing stuff in here and the book is
       short and easy to read.  It's presented in a sort of familial way, the author acts like you just  
       started a job and have been paired with a more experienced, and eccentric, developer who draws  
       diagrams on the backs of napkins etc (actual napkins pictured in the book :)  As I mentioned, I  
       actually read this book before #3...twice.  It won't hurt to read this earlier, especially if you're 
       interest is waning or you're wondering why you just can't use Python or Perl.  But, you have to 
       careful that you don't run out and try to apply these techniques when they aren't warranted, and 
       you're more likely to get more immediate benefit from #3, although not quite as much entertainment 
       or paradigm enlightenment.

Others, yet to be added:  Eloquent Ruby, Ruby Best Practices