After our event last week An introduction to the Microsoft Web Platform (and how to do it for zip, nyada, zero cost to you), quite a few people asked me for book recommendations. Well I can't say I've read every ASP.NET book out there (*far* from it) but I would suggest you take a look at:

• Essential ASP.NET by Fritz Onion. Excellent. It focuses more than most on the underlying architecture, page framework etc so it's not a quick "Let's build a website" book but if you get to grips with the concepts in here you'll be well set to tackle anything. There are actually three flavours:
  • Essential ASP.NET with Examples in Visual Basic.NET
  • Essential ASP.NET with Examples in C#
    • AFAIK both the above are based on ASP.NET 1.1 but still very relevant.
  • Essential ASP.NET 2.0
• Programming ASP.NET by Jesse Liberty and Dan Hurwitz. I like Jesse Liberty's books, he was one of the first .NET authors recommended to me by Tim Sneath many moons ago and it was a good recommendation.
• On my bookshelves I also have
  • Professional ASP.NET 2.0 by Evjen, Hanselman et al. Rather daunting at around 1300 pages but much of it is pictures and property listings. Probably quite good to walk through, I don't find it so useful as a reference.
  • C# Developers Guide to ASP.NET, XML and ADO.NET by McManus and Kinsman. Getting a bit long in the tooth now unless there is a revised version.
  • Microsoft ASP.NET Coding Strategies with the Microsoft ASP.NET Team by Gibbs and Howard. Not really an introductory book.
  • Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics by Dino Esposito. As the title suggests, not an introductory book. This is much more focused on topics such as building handlers and controls etc