Learning Perl is great while your learning specially the first chapter. Programming Perl isn't as good for reading cover to cover, but if you want to look up just what something is doing. there ya go.
Perl Cookbook is the most useful book I've found so far, everytime you say hey, how do I do this? ::flips through pages:: OH! That's how I do that But you need some understanding of Perl in general first.
Of course the best way to learn is to make programs, make programs that you don't know exactly how to do and you can learn alot.