This is my dream Perl book. Everything I prayed it would be. A concise, conversational specification of the language in a somewhat loose tutorial style. It seems to be in places, a word for word rehash of the perldoc pages, and that's just fine by me!
It is most *definitely* too scary for the beginning programmer, but it's self-referential design works brilliantly for me. It makes you WORK for the knowledge; flicking back and forth between sections; digesting thoroughly every sentence before proceeding to the next... Fits my style of learning beautifully!
A total win!