Practical Malware Analysis

Of course, malware analysis is an important skill for every security analyst and anyone who are involved in any aspects of security analysis .
By 2012, there are some nice books on reverse engineering and malware analysis, in my viewpoint, Reverse Engineering is an art not a job, because it needs creativity and the most important thing "interest". if you're not interested in Reverse Engineering, it's impossible to be a good security analyst or security specialist .
Those that are using ready-to-use tools will never be effective as an addicted reverse engineer, it's clear!
So, if you're following my blog, I recommend you to start reverse engineering in an organized manner, "Practical Malware Analysis" by Michael Sikorski & Andrew Honig is a good resource to start reversing engineering badwares .
Also, I suggest you to read this blog post by Danny Quist, a review of Practical Malware Analysis.