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Hacking RSS and Atom Review by W Boudville
don't worry about the different versions of RSS and Atom
The book is very logically arranged into 3 parts. For using feeds, making feeds and mixing feeds. Most readers will probably deal with the first part and maybe the third part.
Using feeds is explained as being able to aggregate data from websites offering these using RSS or Atom methods. From which, you can see how to recast the output into HTML pages for your website. Or maybe send it to your mailbox. Actually and more realistically, to the mailboxes of those who visit your website and ask for this feed.
Orchard deliberately does not go much into the fine distinctions between the different and incompatible RSS standards. Or likewise with the various Atom formats. More technical books can discuss these points ad nauseum. But Orchard is aiming this text at a programmer who just wants to put together a news feed, and does not really care about lower level details.
Making a news feed is the second part of the book. Only a fraction of readers will head here. It's not easy to produce original content, after all.
The last part of the book is essentially an advanced continuation of the first part. You are shown how to embed higher level logic into processing the feeds. With an extensive example on using a Bayesian to try to identify news articles that might be of interest to your readership. Be aware that the Bayesian method is not perfect. Occasionally, you might get an incongruous article.
Definitely, Orchard has produced a nice programming book. (In Python.)