I haven’t bought books for years.
http://devzone.zend.com/public/view/tag/PHP101
Or just Google for "php tutorial". The main thing I have against books is that no matter how you get them, they are going to be at least six months out-of-date by the time they go to print.
On the other hand, not having access to any decent bookstores in this country may have something to do with it. I used to go spend an afternoon at Borders or Barnes and Noble, then go to a little local Cuban tech bookstore and order the books I liked for half the price, if she didn’t already have them in stock.
I once spent some time in Austin, Texas where they had a Bookstop near the hotel, and its computer book section alone was bigger than entire bookstores are here. Add to that higher prices plus a 15.5% VAT... well, that would certainly make online tutorials look much more attractive!
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Yeah, that’s how I basically learned CSS from tutorials online. I spent well over $2000 to take courses in CSS and hardly learned anything. I actually learned more about CSS from online tutorials and just example code like from Zen Garden. I am the kind of person that has to actually "do it" to learn anything, its kinda hard to grasp the concepts from just books, at least most of the time.