http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735621764/sr=8-2/qid=1152538218/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-9072453-8789436?ie=UTF8
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735621772/sr=8-1/qid=1152538218/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-9072453-8789436?ie=UTF8
4 stars (out of 5)
The two books of this series (Core Reference & Advanced Topics) offer broad and deep coverage of ASP.NET.
All the important topics of ASP.NET web sites are covered in a mostly tutorial with a little reference fashion. The books are well researched. The coverage of what really happens during compilation, request processing, and expression evaluation is excellent. The books avoid being an MSDN rehash. By carefully pointing out which ASP.NET versions support which features, the books will be useful for working with any ASP.NET version. No matter what you're working on you'll find something useful in these books. Note that web services are not covered.
The terms "core reference" and "advanced topics" (which MS press is using on all the non beginner books) make no sense at all with these books. If you're serious, you need both books. Think of them as volumes 1 and 2 of a single book.
I do have some issues with these books. The biggest mistake was recommending the use of GDI+ (through the System.Drawing namespace). This is not supported. The System.Drawing namespace page in MSDN states "Classes within the System.Drawing namespace are not supported for use within a Windows or ASP.NET service. Attempting to use these classes from within one of these application types may produce unexpected problems, such as diminished service performance and run-time exceptions."
I didn't enjoy Dino's writing style. It's verbose (at times), he uses odd words to describe things, and was boring even by tech book standards.
The chapter on configuration was difficult. It would have better to cover configuration throughout the book, in the context of what was being configured, instead of a single all configuration and only configuration chapter.
The section of asynchronous pages was confusing and didn't really explain why asynchronous pages improve scalability.
Despite my reservations, there is much that's good about these books. Anybody who's serious about ASP.NET should consider getting both of them.