Reddit reviews DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model

rjett's excellent list and

DOM Scripting really helped me get my head around JS and the DOM. Once I grokked all that book had to offer moving to and understanding jQuery was a snap.

Bulletproof Ajax was an excellent follow-up to Keith's DOM Scripting.

I don't know if this will help, but this is the method I took (I have a background in graphic design, marketing, and advertising). I first went to some hacker friends who are very good at what they do and showed them all kinds of mockups, illustrations, and venn diagrams, everything about how everything would work. I even wrote out the logic for some of my algorithims in plain english.

Their response: they thought it was an interesting idea, but being the awesome programmers that they were, they had very high paying jobs, and their own side jobs, so they didn't have time to work on my project. They did however give me some great advice: (Note I already knew css and html) They said start with these 3 books:
Jquery Novice to Ninja which really helped me get started with basic animation techniques and understand a bit of Jquery. This really helped me lead into javascript programming with Dom Scripting. This book was great for really fleshing out what the jquery was doing, and helped me with a lot of other questions. I feel very comfortable working in jquery and javascript now. The last book they recommended for me was php solutions to teach me about teh back end of what I wanted to build.

Now learning on my own with just a couple books, stackoverflow, and a few questions sent to my friends/mentors was not easy by any means, but I don't regret it for a second.

Some might not like my choices of using jquery, javascript, or php, but one of the reasons my friends recommended me using those languages in particular was how much documentation is readily available, making them a little easier then some other launguages to learn on your own.

Good luck to you.