Someone just asked me for a good source of C#.

I've programmed professionally in about 8 programming languages (included assembly), and have taught in 4 different languages, plus was taught lots of programming languages in college. 

So here's how I learn a new language -- which is very similar to the course I took in college.

I pick a project to work on in the new language: when I wanted to learn PHP, I built my classroom website, when I wanted to learn how to do a website in Visual Basic, I did the school website, etc.

So first, pick a project you want to work on and make sure that the language was suited for it.  When I want to do C#, I write a Windows/XBox/Zune game.  There are other things you can do in C# but it's suited for it.

So I'd use Dan Water's Book on Zune programming, and the website at http://www.begingameprogramming.com/ to play around until I came up with a game I really wanted to write and go from there.

In other words, I'm pretty practical, and don't just program for the sake of programming.