The definitive couchdb book doesn't cost money. They are charging on the o'reily site but the author of couchdb released it for free. Buying it is kind of like donating to them. That's why I asked for similar JS books, I have no intentions in buying a book.
Reading the documentation is never a bad idea but usually I only use it when I'm looking for something specific. When I did most of my work in PHP I found those docs to be useful; search for a function, see a quick example and optionally browse community solutions, not too shabby.
On the other hand, learning JS (to create server side code w/ node) probably can't be learned in a similar fashion. I know a lot of the functions already but most of my JS work up until now has been hacking around with the DOM and Googling for specific things when I get stuck (not really learning). I figured a book that wasn't tied in too close to the DOM would have been a good idea to read because this seems a lot more like theory than just parroting random example code.
What other high quality online resources do you use besides the docs and SO?