I recently moved my wife's contacts and calendars from MS Outlook on XP to her new G5 without a hitch using Outlook 2 Mac ($10). It creates a Vcard file and a calendar file that you can then import into Address Book and iCal. Very easy.
As far as books, I'm reading "Unix for Mac OS X Visual QuickPro Guide", recently released by Peachpit press. It's easy to read and quite thorough. link
