I have read both of the Wrox ASP.NET Problem Design Solution books based on the Beerhouse CMS
Wrox ASP.NET Beerhouse Problem Design Solution
Wrox ASP.NET MVC 1.0
I think these books are fantastic. They are based on a CMS for an imaginary pub it offers a blog, polls, a newsletter, forum and ecommerce. They really show you how to design your system properly, so your DAL, BLL and your user interface are seperated out really nicely. You are able to create a great foundation for a CMS. I have plenty of books on ASP.NET but I think most of them are written as references, with really small scope of expansion and they don't really explain potential pitfalls and issue you run into.
I have worked on a few projects, some by really experienced programmers, but I think often common program structure and standards are not adhered to or ignored. It causes major issues in both debugging and expansion. I really think its worth reading these books even though you are not looking into ASP.NET.
The first book was great because you feel one person wrote it but it does take a long time to code. You can tell with the MVC version that it has been written by different people but using the Linq2SQL it is really quick to code. The problem with Linq2SQL is its not going to be extended by Microsoft but it will be by Codesmiths with PLINQO. I have not opted to work on a personal project in the Entity Framework, which is very similar and is the big brother of Linq2SQL. You no longer use the DataConext and instead use Entites. eg the model is called mark then L2SQL initiation: markDataContext dc = new markDataContext(); EF: markEntities ef = new markEntities(); Suprisingly this to my an hour to figure out.
The MVC book also doesn't show you the shortcuts eg right clicking on the controller action to create a view but I think its good you get an understanding of various methods. I think there is better ways to validate your inputs.
Nerd Dinner
Another great example for MVC is the Nerd Dinner by most of the Microsoft Employees including Scott Gu(The main man) and Phil Haack(Senior Product manager MVC). This really gives you a better introduction when starting from scratch and there are alot of cool things to look at.
This probably didn't make much sense but I hope it helps anyone thinking of buying these books. If you have never touched ASP.NET I would definitely look at ASP.NET MVC. It feels more compact and cleaner.