What should I be reading-along with PWK?

[OS-48164]

Hey guys!
So I just started the PWK course yesterday (yay!!), got my course materials, lab access, etc.
I have Art of Exp. 2nd Ed., Gray Hat Hacking 4th ed., The Hacker playbook 3, Pentesting Essentials and Advanced Pentesting(Hacking the would's most secure networks), The shellcoder's handbook, some kali books, etc.

Obviously I'm going to want to finish all of these at some point. But while I'm taking my PWK course, what would you guys recommend that would help me the most?

[OS-34759]

Hey have fun with the pwk!

The art of exploitation is already overkill for this course.
The hacker playbook 3 is awesome but is not gonna help you a lot with the pwk.
I don't know the Pentesting Essentials one and I never read the Gray Hat Hacking book, so that's that.

What I would recommend you to do, is practice in the lab.
Read the course material and start to practice, after you're lab time is up, start reading again. ;D

If you absolutely have to read something, I would recommend :

https://nostarch.com/pentesting

A lot of these examples are gonna help you with the lab. It's a little dated but that's just fine.

Hope this helps.

Have the greatest of times man!

[OS-24680]

For PWK the material itself is a good starting point. Labs are more of research based and learn on the fly.

If you want to gain a better understanding of underlying concepts, you can try the following books:

Penetration testing : a hands-on introduction to hacking by Georgia Weidman - Read this to understand the methodology of a penetration test. The techniques are old but it gives a good intro to pentesting.

How Linux Works, No starch press - gives a good explanation of Linux OS. Knowing these concepts helps during enumeration.

Any intro course / book on Python.

Cuckoo's Egg - It is the first-person account of the hunt for a computer hacker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Not directly related to PwK but it is a good read nonetheless.