can any one recommend any good books on python programming or any programming books for newbies? i have the tutorial but would rather have a book when im not near a computer.

Python really is one of those languages you will learn best when you *are* sat in front of a computer!

BUt, still, within the Python community, Alex Martelli's recent (i.e. very up-to-date) book "Python in a Nutshell" is very highly regarded. Of course, this is an O'Rielly publication, and it costs $24.95 US or about £25 UK. I beleive its available on Amazon.

Two more really useful resources are www.python.org and comp.lang.python. The former has loads of documentation and links, the latter is a breeding ground for Advanced Pythonistas ;-)

hth
-andyj

I'll second that.

python.org is where 99% of my python questions are answered. Their online docs are incredible. c.l.p is nice too, but I prefer #python (on freenode, oftc, ircnet, efnet, and others, connected by one relaybot) for asking for help. Of course, you can always ask specific questions here

I've learned so much from just reading the Python html documention offline while I chuck code at IDLE. With the interactive interpreter I can work line by line, or open and run any file of code and then start testing some functions in it. Highly recommended.