[mgeorgoulo]

Of course, the same method can be applied to reading other people's code. Actually, that's analogous to what Franklin did. He tried to capture the essence of a finished work of which he approved.

Using a phrase-book in such a manner wouldn't be beneficial. And programming language books are much like phrase-books: guides to syntax.

Other kinds of programming books, in the category "Do X with Y programming language" are best avoided. They tend to look like phone-books. It is best to decouple X from Y.