Exactly. There usually is some stuff about the deeper, darker corners of a language in the type of book I pick.
I usually pick the authoritative book / advanced book.
Think "Programming PHP", "The joy of clojure", "The C Programming Language", etc.
I don't necessarily need to know all about performance optimization, the async model or non-html templating.
Reading a technical book cover to cover feels wasteful imo
Day 1: read the introduction of a book, set up editor and environment
Day 2: (superficially) learn flow control and type system
Day 3: practice with coding problems on codewars
Day 4-7: reimplement one of my projects
Week 2: read the second quarter of the book and continue with puzzles
Week 3+: Just projects, maybe invest a day into tooling somewhere in between
That is assuming 1-3 hour days