Best books to learn emacs and all popular packages?

Been using emacs for a little while now and getting quite comfortable with it but want to start excelling and getting to the more power user side of things. Does anyone have any recommendations for books that does some real deep dives into emacs? Thanks

I'll link you to a recent tweet from the magit maintainer that explains how to learn it the best way: https://twitter.com/magit_emacs/status/1525517076080775168?s=20&t=40hXnEhA0Mbiud1O1QSyuQ Honestly, I used to read a bunch on emacs: docs, blogs, vlogs, etc... But after some years I feel I unlocked most progress in the last one, when I wanted to get shit done and just worked on setting things I actually needed up and fixing what was not working or bugged.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/LearningEmacs 1. Choose something specific that you actually want or need to do. 2. Try to do it. Find out what you need, to get that done. Ask Emacs.

The Book Learning GNU Emacs is quite good for learning shortcuts when you want to keep learning without your computer.

[Mastering Emacs](https://www.masteringemacs.org/). Hopefully, the author will update that book for people that use evil mode so that they can, too, enjoy Emacs.

If using evil mode is preventing you from enjoying Emacs, then I would recommend not using evil mode.

100% agreed. Pick something that interests you, and do it. And if you can't think of something that *you* want to do, you can figure out solutions for Emacs problems for *other* people here on reddit, or on emacs.stackexchange.com or stackoverflow.com and you will get the same benefits of learning and reinforcement-by-doing (with the side-benefit of helping other people). And if someone posts a better solution than yours, that's even better -- you've then learned even more than you expected to!

`info-emacs-manual` (C-h r) https://emacsdocs.org/

This book even got an update to Emacs v28 one or two weeks ago. I received already two updates for free after I purchased it. This book was an eye opener to me, although I already used Emacs before that book was available. If I remember correctly, it favors to use only little of extra packages. And it teaches you the ideas behind Emacs native keybindings. In my mind, reworking that book to utilize evil, could even damage its greatness.

Hint why might be in the name.

It might well be the case that the author has limited familiarity with vi/m and evil, and little interest in acquiring enough of it to be able to write a guide. Perhaps an evil-mode user will write an evil-mode guide, though.

I very much enjoy Emacs, you're completely missing the point here!

> It might well be the case that the author has limited familiarity with vi/m and evil, and little interest in acquiring enough of it to be able to write a guide. .. and that is perfectly fine. > Perhaps an evil-mode user will write an evil-mode guide, though. This minority of Emacs users is always loud and promoting the evil stuff, so they possibly done that already. I regard that as OT. What I wanted to emphasize is, that the book gives insight to Emacs default keybindings. the book makes them understandable and shows its (a possible) scheme behind.

Try these... Xah Lee Emacs Tutorial [http://xahlee.info/emacs/index.html](http://xahlee.info/emacs/index.html) Mastering Emacs [https://www.masteringemacs.org/](https://www.masteringemacs.org/) Mastering Emacs Reading Guide [https://www.masteringemacs.org/reading-guide](https://www.masteringemacs.org/reading-guide) Harley Hahn's Emacs Field Guide [http://www.harley.com/emacs/index.html](http://www.harley.com/emacs/index.html) Pragmatic Emacs [https://pragmaticemacs.wordpress.com/](https://pragmaticemacs.wordpress.com/) Sacha Chua [https://sachachua.com/blog/](https://sachachua.com/blog/) Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text! [http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html](http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html) The Emacs Editor [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html\_mono/emacs.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/emacs.html) The Org Manual [https://orgmode.org/org.pdf](https://orgmode.org/org.pdf) Org Mode Compact Guide [https://orgmode.org/orgguide.pdf](https://orgmode.org/orgguide.pdf) Worg [https://orgmode.org/worg/](https://orgmode.org/worg/) GNU Emacs Reference Cards [https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/index.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/index.html) In my opinion some of the worst documentation ever has been put out by GNU: sloppy, spotty, intensely obtuse, often out of date, more like man pages than real coverage of the subject. Like playing a game of Charades against a goat. Xah Lee is good. "Pragmatic Emacs" is good but brief, though very clear. Sacha Chua...mmm...maybe. May suit you better than me, but she does put out a weekly update. Lucid manager, "More Productive with Emacs" series. Worth a look. [https://lucidmanager.org/categories/productivity/](https://lucidmanager.org/categories/productivity/) Harley Hah's "Emacs Field Guide" was a big help, as was Mickey Petersen's "Mastering Emacs" For the sites, HTTrack can suck down most or all of what you need. I did that with Xah Lee's site, then later paid him for a copy. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTrack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTrack) You can check the following two sites for books. You can decide how/when/if to pay for what you get. Your call. Use at your own risk. PDF Drive [https://www.pdfdrive.com/](https://www.pdfdrive.com/) Z-Library [https://z-lib.org/](https://z-lib.org/)

I agree with the other responses to your point. It is a bit weird to expect the author to update the whole book for non-default key bindings. I do think everyone writing about emacs should make an effort to always use function-names, so everyone is able to learn from them irrespectively of what key bindings they prefer to use.

I've never seen a book that attempts to write about all popular emacs packages. I guess one could write it. Not a book, but [System Crafters](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAiiOTio8Yu69c3XnR7nQBQ) has a series called "Emacs from Scratch, in which he goes over customizing an Emacs init file, including his favorite packages, most of them very popular.

Exactly this!

Do you by chance have come across any of them discussing evil mode? I'm not a proper ex-vim user but I find it useful together with default Emacs key binding. I'd love some better way than looking through vim cheatsheets to understand the ergonomics.

I have to agree with this... I actually have considered several times to learn vanilla Emacs keybindings, if I do, I know what book I'm getting...

In case you do: Imho it is crucial to move crtl-key to a better location. Many are using CapsLock-key as Ctrl. I dedicated my SpaceBar-key to act as ctrl and made CapsLock-key to act as Hyper.