Having never read a book on mySQL or PHP, I can offer you no help there. However, I can say that I have seen many open source PHP code and that is the best way to learn. First of all, its free, second of all, there is so much of it, you can practically find anything you want, if you know where to look....
I would learn by looking at others code, its the best way I think. Look at their code and experiment. Find a good message board that can really help you (try
www.tek-tips.com, better than the PHP boards here and at vb.com).
Hope this helps,
-Vic