I'm half way through my review of "Oracle ADF Real World Developer's Guide" by Jobinesh Purushothaman - unfortunately some work deadlines de-railed me from having completed my review by now but here goes. First thing, Jobinesh works in the Oracle Product Management team with me, so is a colleague. That declaration aside, its clear that this is someone who has done the "real world" side of ADF development and that comes out in the book.
In this book he addresses both the newbies and the experience developers alike. He introduces the ADF building blocks like entity objects and view obejcts, but also goes into some of the nitty gritty details as well. There is a pro and con to this approach; having only just learned about an entity or view object, you might then be blown away by some of the lower details of coding or lifecycle. In that respect, you might consider this a book which you could read 3 or 4 times; maybe skipping some elements in the first read but on the next read you have a better grounding to learn the more advanced topics.
One of the key issues he addresses is breaking down what happens behind the scenes. At first, this may not seem important since you trust the framework to do everything for you - but having an understanding of what goes on is essential as you move through development. For example, page 58 he explains the full lifecycle of what happens when you execute a query. I think this is a great feature of his book. You see this elsewhere, for example he explains the full lifecycle of what goes on when a page is accessed : which files are involved,the JSF lifecycle etc.
He also sprinkes the book with some best practices and advice which go beyond the standard features of ADF and really hits the mark in terms of "real world" advice.
So in summary, this is a great ADF book, well written and covering a mass of information. If you are brand new to ADF its still valid given it does start with the basics. But you might want to read the book 2 or 3 times, skipping the advanced stuff on the first read. For those who have some basics already then its going to be an awesome way to cement your knowledge and take it to the next levels. And for the ADF experts, you are still going to pick up some great ADF nuggets.
Advice: every ADF developer should have one!