I”m sure I read Raspberry Pi Cookbook right after or during my RetroPi build. I had a great time building that. The girls still ask to play it and I like to play it when I have time too. This was a very thorough book and covered things more professionally than the other Raspberry Pi books that I picked up from the library.
This got 4 our of 5 stars from me mostly because of again of the professionalism of the writing and how polished the book is compared to those other books that look very much slapped together. Since building that first project I’ve also created a digital frame, that tells me what time it is and the weather, etc. It’s a nice build to have above my other monitors.
I also plan on building another one with a camera in it. I hope to have that one built early next year if Santa is good to me! This is a good book to have while you are building your first Raspberry Pi project. Not sure if you need to buy it though, I think this is more of a rent, as I doubt you will need it again.