Reddit reviews Optical Mineralogy: Principles And Practice

I think it's pattern recognition more than anything. By looking at the minerals as much as possible in different samples you can really get an idea of their key properties and the best things to distinguish them.

Gribble & Hall has probably been one of the most useful books for me; it really helps you make your own mind up about what you're looking at, by using the mineral properties. Looking at pictures may help but you really need to build up your own mental checklist.

Saying that though, I would get a book with a good collection of mineral images in. I don't know of any ones that I actually like, although the Imperial Rock Library, the UCL library and this one from the Univeristy of North Carolina should get you started.

If your working with thin sections i'd suggest Gribble and Halls book, Not sure what level of detail your looking for but MacKenzie's rocks and minerals in thin section good to get the basics of optical mineralogy from.