Good book on structured output prediction. The introductory chapters and some of the latter ones gave some interesting and novel insights on kernel methods in general to me. I particularly liked the tutorial about energy models. Other chapters were somewhat too mathy and technical to bring their message across.
A rigorous, comprehensive, succinct and even attractively-priced and -bound introduction to machine learning developments since 2000, with an informed focus on bioinformatic applications throughout. This fine job from MIT Press belongs on every researcher's bookshelf.