Hello,

I'd like to know what the best book to learn Java is. FYI, it's not for me, so no need to explain that Java is not good for making games. If someone could please send a link and/or title that'd be great. The book is meant for someone who has never programmed in any form, so please keep that in mind. The reason I came here is I can't seem to find a good book, and some decent looking ones presume you already have some coding knowledge.

Ovicior

The book is meant for someone who has never programmed in any form

I really like Java (and I can try to make games with it just fine thank you) but I don't see it as a good language to introduce programming to people.

as you said, "book is meant for someone who has never programmed in any form" any book writer will present their books after full research and workout doc. and experiments over his ideal book writing, so you will not get any unique book over programming, its common to all so, try to get the book which tells you to cover which area of coding practise and totals syllabus and other things in mind to fulfill.

I suggest to go with "head first java latest edition" which is best java books for beginners in 2014.

I've heard very good things about Herbert Schildt's "Java, A Beginner's Guide." The 5th edition covers Java 7, which is a good place to start. Your friend can move on up to Java 8's new functional features after getting comfortable with 7. Besides, it's going to be a while before 8 becomes a major part of the Java ecosystem. And you can tell your friend that Java is perfectly fine for games :-)

I'd start with a procedural language instead of an object oriented language like Java

My first language is C#. I've managed it, even though I'm far from being a decent programmer.

If you want to learn Java, all you need is the internet. No book required:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/getStarted/index.html

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/index.html