I just read the Blog Design Solutions from Andy Budd et. al., and was a bit disappointed.
The book in itself is good, and yes, it can be useful at times, however the title is a bit misleading.
The book explains several blogengines (Movable Type, ExpressionEngine, WordPress and Textpattern) and in that area it is good, but apart from including some examples of blog themes, it does not say anything about actual blog design.

I was looking for information about such things as appearance, style, where to put interesting and important stuff, how to arrange content, and such.

I am glad that it includes a chapter about blog engine writing, but I don’t think I’ll ever write my own blog engine – WordPress works perfect for me.

So, it was a bit of a disappointment, but still a good reference book. Would be even better if it was not about WordPress 1.5