I originally picked up the "Teach Yourself Perl in 24 hours" and am posting this comment to try and prevent others from making the same mistake. Before I get slammed for my choice in books allow me to defend by saying that I have used other 24hour books and had decent returns from those investments. Turns out, I should have stuck with my gut and just picked up "Lerning Perl" from the start.

The worst part of the 24hour book was that there were no answers for the activities/questions at the end of chapters. Makes it darn near impossible to keep going once you get stuck...

Anyhow, 'Learning Perl' not only has suggested answers to help you along, but the writing style is much more fun to read and it does a better job (IMHO) of presenting items in a logical order.