Bob DuCharme’s book: Learning SPARQL

I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to learn SPARQL 1.1 from the specs. Bob DuCharme’s book Learning SPARQL 1.1  arrived just in time to save me from that fate. The book is well organized, progresses well and has great examples. What I particularly like and what you don’t get in the specs, are the little insights, suggestions and gotcha’s that come from someone who has used this a lot. The only disappointment from my standpoint was his punting on the NOT versus MINUS distinction, where after a single example of both that return equivalent results, he sends the readers back to the spec if they are interested in the subtle difference. I am interested in the subtle difference, but I had hoped I could get it a bit better explained than the terse spec. All in all, excellent work, would recommend it to anyone picking up SPARQL.