Frew Schmidt has read the first four chapter of the new Catalyst book and gives some first impressions:

So far though, I would say that the book is better than most programming books. Really, a lot of programming books need to be more like this, instead of focusing entirely on the arcana of one framework they should help you be a better programmer overall.

Seems Matt and Kieren has got something interesting going on. Now we really need to get Catalyst 5.8 out there :-)