A friends wife wants to buy him one of these for Xmas and having never used such a book I wondered if there were any recommendations?

He’s got a hybrid bike used for commuting to work so not disc brakes, HT II BB etc, and if I was to classify his level of cycle maintenance I would class as beginner but willing to have a crack at most jobs. A bit like me then!

His wife mentioned the Haynes book but I wasn’t sure if that was a bit basic.

I used the Haynes version for a number of years and found it usefull to get to grips with general fettleing. for my birthday I was bought the park tools maintenance book and this is very conprensive, listing the same procedure for many manufacturers.

For example there are four or five Hydraulic disk break bleading procedures covered for the main companies.

I would recommend either just for tinkering and maintenance of your own bike, but if you intended to help others out with their bikes or have lots of bikes with diferent kit on them then go for the Park Tools one.

combination of Zinn and Park is a good start – possibly see if he can enroll in a course at LBS as well?

Park Big Blue Book.
Although you can dispense with the book and just take the laptop to the garage and use their t’interweb version

I think local authorities will do free maintenance courses too. Saves a whole lot of ‘learning by wrecking’ as I did 😀

Zinn has served me well so far – latest version seems pretty up to date too.

He’s a bit of tinker so I reckon his missus would prefer to buy him a manual rather than the course option, even if that might be a better option long term.

Don’t the Zinn books come in two flavours (mtb or road)? Having a hybrid as his bike he sits between the two disciplines of road/mtb…