TITLE: What are some good beginner graph theory texts?
QUESTION [16 upvotes]: What are your experiences with them?

REPLY [3 votes]: I learned graph theory from John Kennedy and Christopher Hanusa, the former an extremely  well respected graph theorist and the latter a rising young combinatorialist. There's a lot of good graph theory texts now and I consulted practically all of them when learning it.
  The first edition of Adrian Bondy and U.S.R Murtry's Graph Theory is still one of the best introductory courses in graph theory available and it's still online for free, as far as I know. The second edition is more comprehensive and up-to-date, but it's more of a problem course and therefore more difficult. Jonathan Gross and Jay Yellen's Graph Theory With Applications is the best textbook there is on graph theory PERIOD. Rigorous and as comprehensive as it gets. The section on topological graph theory is particularly good. (I HATE their combinatorics text–it's a hodgepodge text that's nowhere near as well written and organized.) 
  There are several other good books. Chartrand et. al isn't as comprehensive as Gross and Yellen, but quite good and in the same spirit. Douglas West's book is considered by many to be the preeminent graph theory text. I own it–it's pretty good, but not as careful and comprehensive as Gross and Yellen. If you can get a cheap copy, by all means, get West–but if you're gonna end up spending THAT much money, might as well go a little more and get the Ferrari. 
 There's my 2 cents for what it's worth.