Today I found on prismatic interesting post about what to read before interview. It is really worth recommending because of language agnostic list of books and some best for your language. http://codingforinterviews.com/books For JavaScript it is Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig. If you don't know him, then at least you should know jQuery which is his library. Book is pretty new so I haven't read it yet but look really promising. Edit: Some of my friends told me that book is not so fun to read (they are rather advanced so it's hard to tell without reading what is my opinion, but maybe consider also opinions on Amazon before buying) The easiest to see is how much books about Design Patterns are recommended. Personally I used to think about them as stupid. Most of us know them at basic level and in my opinion it should suffice. I know that it will work for sad projects, but when you create something new, that you have no idea how it should work it...