@DVDdoug Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look.
Hard to say. I'm certainly no expert, but I'd rather call myself an intermediate learner, if that makes any sense.
Yes, I've noticed this trend. But books can have one of two spins: either (#1) a book on a specific language with some general concepts thrown in every now and then or (#2) a book about language-agnostic, generic CS and programming concepts, with either some pseudocode or an actual language just as examples for the concepts explained. I have got a shelfful of books of type #1 already, so I'm more after a #2 book.