I want to follow-up on the point to read from a variety of different sources. This has been working for me, at least. In the last 4 months I have purchased:
Learn Perl in 21 Days
Teach Yourself CGI
Programming the Perl DBI
Network Programming Perl
Object-Oriented Perl
The Perl CD Bookshelf (only $60!) which includes:

Learning Perl
Programming Perl
Perl Cookbook
Perl in a Nutshell
Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
Advanced Perl Programming

And of course there is all the great documentation and tutorial here on PM and elsewhere online. I'm not recommending these particular books to you, I'm just saying having a wide and diverse library has done me well. Have I read all of them through? No. Do I understand all that I read? No. But relying on the work of more than one or two has helped me tremendously in piecing it all together. Many of the books cross paths and seeing the same concept described a little differently produces those magic "Oh I see!" moments quite well.

$PM = "Perl Monk's";
$MCF = "Most Clueless Friar Abbot";
$nysus = $PM . $MCF;