Totally agree. Premature abstraction is just another way to say premature optimization and it is the root of so many problems. YAGNI (you aint gonna need it).
If that's what your looking for, I find books that are adopted as university textbooks are best. i.e. C Programming Modern Approach by KN King, Object Pascal Handbook by Marco Cantu. Generally I'm staying away from O'Reilly, No Starch Press etc.. They all feel like books created by pasting a bunch of blog posts together. University texts are usually twice the price, but IMHO worth it - they are made for teaching knowledge, not just sharing it.