However I am very cautious about recommending bad books because they are accessible. Instead I would ask what a good and also acceptable book is, and recommend that.

It is like Matt's Script Archives. Yes, they did a lot to get a lot of people into Perl. They made a lot of people's lives easier. But they have resulted in a lot of cracked boxes, and a lot of people who have no idea how at risk they are.

But I really believe that it is possible to work from the beginning doing things correctly without being so forbidding that beginners cannot learn. I believe that seeking to find that approach is better than just accepting that beginners are doomed to accepting whatever crud the publishers are pushing because they wanted to crank out Yet Another book in a popular topic...