There's a lot of really good Python books too (and I have a 5 foot stack of Perl books). I read one for Python in 2012 that finally got me into coding a lot. People overlook how the basic building blocks of Python are very simple. I learned Perl after Python and it's fine, but I often found Python to be a bit clearer and more obvious than Perl.

If I had to use a language just for Unix scripting, it would probably be Perl though.