I wouldnt be put off reading The Good Parts by that post, although it does raise some valid points IMHO. The point is, the author of that blog post probably wouldn't have even known about those things had they not read the book. Whether something is 'good' or 'bad' is somewhat subjective. Check out Crockford's YUI Theatre lectures (http://yuiblog.com/crockford/) to get a taste of what you'll be in store for in that book.

At some point in those videos he mentions a book called The Little Schemer - I haven't read that but the reviews on Amazon look decent and if Crockford calls it out as useful you should probably not ignore it.

I found a really good book to be Object Oriented JavaScript from Packt (http://www.packtpub.com/object-oriented-javascript/book). Unlike most other js books, it spends a good few hundred pages without mentioning browsers. I seem to recommend their books a fair bit, no I do not have anything to gain from doing so :)

Finally, once you start getting stuck into things go hang out in the #node.js IRC channel. IRC is still probably the best technical resource out there as far as I'm concerned, especially when the community is as friendly as the #node.js regulars are.

Is it possible to learn JS from The Good Parts? From what I've heard, it seems to be more for reinforcing good practices for those already familiar with the language.

I'd learn JS with Rebecca Murphey's book. I haven't seen anything better.

I'd also read, and think about, accepting or denying what Crockford says. A lot of what he says is great, a lot of it - adding custom methods to inbuilt classes (potentially conflicting with some other libraries custom modifications) rather than redefining your own classes for example - isn't.

I'm not sure, since I learned JavaScript way before I read The Good Parts. But avoiding the bad parts from the start will at least ensure you develop coding practices in line with the good parts, which is a great thing :)

I prefer to learn from reading code examples and so I found a freely available online book called jQuery Fundamentals (Rebecca Murphey) helpful. Although it's focus is on jQuery, the introduction to Javascript is second to none: http://jqfundamentals.com/book/index.html

I've not read it personally but i've seen recommendations for: Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, 2nd Edition by Nicholas C. Zakas and published by Wrox.