Difference between Programming "Textbooks" and "Books"?

On programming textbooks I presume you are referring to reference materials that schools and academic institutions are using when conducting their courses. Schools and academic institutions have their teaching principles, aka the curriculum or teaching syllabus, the reference materials that they adopt have to follow closely to the teaching principles. It is not possible for curriculum designers to arbitrary pick up a book as a reference for students and expect students to be able to follow and learn programming well, and it is even harder for curriculum designers to articulate state of the art programming matters, without deliberating into the intended outcome for the learned students. With that in mind, textbooks often follow the taught curriculum and should contain sufficiently appropriate examples and 'homework' or assignment for students to follow up with.

Albeit, students should read up more books on programming than what is recommended. On one aspect, the reference book may be well written but does not provide sufficiently good quality examples/ actual programs for learners to better appreciate what is being taught in lessons. Other aspects, there are many good books on close-to-real-life applications published but not adopted as textbooks due to their non alignment with curriculum development.

As for which author's book is the best. This is difficult to answer, because there are many different readers as well as authors. Programming books are not and should be written like best selling books. Best selling books can be narrative and enticing, but that is not essential for programming books. What is the point if you can finish reading 10 best selling programming books but do not understand well the underlying programming projects and concepts?

The best book for you, the ones that attracts you to it and you can understand and learn after reading.