I used 3ds Max for about a year (actually I spent most of that year playing games ) and am really using Maya for a few weeks now. January, february I had no book, so mostly read some in the help files and did the help file turorials.
Here's some of the stuff I did in max, my first 'project' in Maya you can see in the WIP forum called polygonal goblin.

Edit: sry, I've been using maya for 2 weeks, last week before I got the book (savvy) I did the poly Giraffe turial. Not that exciting though.