Welcome to my personal blog. I have been reading some R books recently, and I want to share my experiments with you.
R for Everyone is the prescribed textbook in your class, which have already accumulated many 4-stars and 5-stars reviews on Amazon. It have not been introduced to China, so I just readed the contents and reviews from audiences. RfE is new, and it deals with some packages which were developed recently. You have told me that this book involved the usage of various packages only, lacking in programming. This book, however, is for beginners, not for intermediate or advanced readers who will take advantage of the programming features. RfE is readable and accessible for you, and maybe you have to read it carefully and thoroughly in order to get an A grade.
More PROGRAMMING, less statistics. This is my criteria when choosing R books. The Art of R Programming is a wonderful resource for programming, as its title showed. You have read the first half of it, and please finish the other half as quickly. The capacity of programming will play an essential role in your job-searching.
In addition, I believe that R for Dummies and R in a Nutshell (2nd edition) (Download PDF!) are ideal for you. They involve more language features of R, which can contribute to your understanding of R as a programming language (rather than a statistal software). RfD is a very basic book, written for R users who have not ever learn other programming languages such as C, C++ and Python. RiaN is intermediate, which covers many details in the R language. RiaN has been translated into Chinese, and I am reading it.
In the contrast, R in Action (Download PDF!) and The R Book (2nd edition) (Download PDF!) are inappropriate for you. They are filled with statistical methods.
What’s more, R is a powerful tool in terms of plots and graphics. I have not learn R graphics, but R Graphics Cookbook (Download PDF!) is very popular on Amazon.
PS. Machine Learning is a field of computer science, but its implementation can be conducted with R (and Python). I think you can try Machine Learning for Hackers (Download PDF!) as a taste. An alternative is Machine Learning with R (Download PDF!), but I have not read it.
I will discover other R books. So much for now.