Like archie4oz, I'd definitely say,
Ruby: oh sweet goodness! Is there anything more beautiful?
Rails: Meh. Immature even after a few years of mega-hype.

I like a lot of the thinking in Rails (convention over configuration, e g), but the implementation is severely lacking. Single-threaded? Triple-ouch. And deployment is always a pain.

The book is great though, as you say, also as an intro to Ruby.