Jon Skeet is another great guy for this
It's been a few years since, but if I remember correctly, it was an interview of Jon Skeet on an episode of Scott Hanselman's podcast where he spoke about reading the C# spec, and as a young beginner in programming I loved that advice because when I did read the spec, I was pleasantly surprised, perhaps naive, that all the information I needed to learn the language was right there, available for free when I thought I had to purchase books etc. to learn more. :)
This...I couldn't place enough emphasis on it.
If I could attribute a single factor which has had the most impact in differentiating my performance vs. peers who were hired around the same time, it'd be a philosophy of setting aside time to study specs in detail and keeping up with them.