If I were to recommend any one book on scripting, it would be "Windows Scripting Secrets" by Weltner.

His approach is both practical and fun. While he primarily uses VBScript, with KiXtart's new features, most scripts translate pretty easily. Almost all his scripts are oriented toward either exploring resources or accomplishing real administrative tasks.

One of the cooler things he explores is how to dump properties from objects. The nice thing about this is that any documentation on a particular object always seems to be a day late and a dollar short. By digging into the objects themselves with a few simple scripts, you can find out what features (say) IE 6.x has added. The core properties and methods will stay pretty much the same, but you will often find some very cool undocumented features -- and in this case I don't mean bugs.

New Mexico Mark