It's been difficult to "learn" node. Because the libraries have changed drastically in the last 2-3 years, many guides are out of date. You can learn the basics through trial and error and the docs, but you can't learn best practices, which are important if you're trying to write software that other people will use (OSS).

I've read through this guide before, and it's okay, but it's not really all that good at defining best practices, and in fact in some places the code isn't very good, but Manuel fully admits this in a few places.

If you don't already know JavaScript, or only know a little, this is probably a good place to start, but if you're already fluent in JS and have used server-side JS a bit in the past (whether through Rhino, sm, v8, whatever), it's probably not a very useful guide. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of good resources out there - the language is very new and the library of current and available knowledge is not very large.

I haven't checked out the Node Cookbook yet, but do plan to in the future. Until then, to really get a good knowledge of some of the APIs you still have to do a bit of trailblazing.