Federico Cargnelutti has posted a quick review of the Packt book "Symfony 1.3 Web Application Development" (by Tim Bowler and Wojciech Bancer).

This book is not a reference guide, but an example driven tutorial that takes you through the process of building Model-View-Controller-based web applications. You will learn how to create and develop a simple online store application. It also covers best practices for better and quicker application development.

He notes that, as a matter of personal choice, he didn't like that the examples used Propel instead of Doctrine for the ORM. Despite this, he felt that it does a good job preparing you for building Symfony applications from scratch. He also recommends the Practical Symfony.