I'm going to start teaching my girlfriend how to program and I've purchased a copy of Learning Perl (aka the Llama book) to do so. Now, she doesn't know any programming at all, so that's the better book for her. Programming Perl (aka the Camel book) is much better for someone who already knows a language (preferably C/C++/JAVA), and that's what I've used when teaching colleagues Perl.

As for what to do? Read the Camel book once through. Just take the 6 hours, sit down, and read it. Then, go through again and read it, this time doing examples of things you're seeing. Play with it. Then, start doing whatever project you had in mind to learn Perl for. (You did have a project in mind, right?