Illustrated WPF and WPF Programmer’s Reference

I am studying for my MCPD exams, which I am taking in 2 weeks.  Because the official exam guide is so horrible, I picked up a couple more more books.  The first is Illustrated WPF by Solis.  I made it through page 141 before giving up.  I then opened WPF Programmer’s Reference by Stephens.  I made it through page 178.  Both books suffer from the same problem – they don’t teach WPF.  Rather, they introduce all of the concepts of WPF in a subject-specific way.  For example in Solis, Chapter 5 Layout, then Panels, then the StackPanel, then the wrapPanel, etc…  Each section has an illustration or two with a basic code snippet that you can read.  The problem is that I (and most people) don’t learn computer languages like this – it is equivalent to reading MSDN cover to cover.  I draw on my experience from Ivor Horton’s Beginning C++ or Doug Wright’s Beginning VB6.  Those books were more tutorial based with exercises to encourage the reader to have his/her hands on the keyboard.

I have one more book WPF4 Unleashed by Nathan.  I am not optimistic.  I’ll give the book a creditable try but I am already thinking about an application I can write to teach myself the concepts.  I hope I can get it done by my self-imposed exam deadline.