When I was in college, I used to program a lot in Java and read a lot of books on Java. I found most of the text lacking and boring. The only book which didn't

When I was in college, I used to program a lot in Java and read a lot of books on Java. I found most of the text lacking and boring. The only book which didn't seem to insult reader's intelligence was Core Java vol 1 http://www.amazon.com/Core-Volume-I-Fundamentals-Edition-Series/dp/0131482025 http://www.amazon.com/Core-Volume-I-Fundamentals-Edition-Ser... Read the first 6 chapters very carefully and you will have rock solid foundation. Then skim through event handling, exceptions, streams and generic programming.