This book definitely skews pragmatic, hands on and doesn't assume much. Covers both VHDL and Verilog. Has sections on branch prediction, register renaming, etc.
I personally am not into the verilog specific books. For me HDLs are hardware description languages, so first you learn to design digital hardware, then you learn to describe them.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Digital_Design_and_Comp...
This book definitely skews pragmatic, hands on and doesn't assume much. Covers both VHDL and Verilog. Has sections on branch prediction, register renaming, etc.