In the long run (and often even in the beginning) I find well-written, well-organized reference material to be more useful than a tutorial guide.
I did not use Lutz to learn python, for example, I used David Beazley's Python Essential Reference. He includes a brief tutorial of the implementation and basic language features and moves to a large selection of the python standard library. My favorite C book is the reference by Harbison and Steele, which is a careful, thorough, and detailed reference of the language features and some of the standard library.
I never understood why would anybody want a bulky reference book describing the standard library, when they same information – only more up-to-date and searchable – can be found online.
I did not use Lutz to learn python, for example, I used David Beazley's Python Essential Reference. He includes a brief tutorial of the implementation and basic language features and moves to a large selection of the python standard library. My favorite C book is the reference by Harbison and Steele, which is a careful, thorough, and detailed reference of the language features and some of the standard library.