Did a search for reading materials

I'm not quite as big on Proficient Motorcycling as a lot of people seem to be; I felt that it had a lot of good info, but it also has a tremendous amount of overlap with the MSF BRC (which makes sense--Hough mentions being involved in creating the MSF curriculum in the book). It does go into more detail in a few subjects and cover a few others that are more or less left out of the MSF (riding on gravel/dirt being one of them and a section that I would've loved to have read sooner...it figures that I read it after getting home from a visit to a state park that involved about four or five miles of gravel road each way, in addition to a bunch of tarmac).

If you feel like the MSF class went by too fast and you're sure you can't remember a lot of what you heard, Proficient Motorcycling is probably a great buy. If you managed to soak up every ounce of information, you're amazing and should go on Jeopardy...and you're probably better off borrowing the book than buying it. If you want to do some additional reading before taking the MSF class, go ahead and buy the book. If you're not planning on taking the class...change your plans.

Personally, the two tidbits I picked up from reading the book (the dirt riding tips and thinking about how the amount of bar-pushing/countersteering directly affects lean angle and thereby line) were worth reading it; I'm hoping that when I go back and read it again in the future I can manage to pick up a couple more tidbits. If that does happen, then I'd say it's very worth buying.

I've also started Sport Riding Techniques, but I put that aside until I get a chance to run some of the drills that I've already read about and know I need to practice (particularly emergency stops / threshold braking). I don't want to overload myself too fast.