In my humble opinion O'Reilly & Associates make the best technical books on the planet. They focus mainly on Internet, Unix and programming related topics. They start off slow with plenty of examples and when you finish the book your an expert. I think you could get by if you only read half of the book. They also add some humor to otherwise boring subjects.
They have great books on HTML, PERL, CGI Programming, Java, JavaScript, C/C++, Sendmail, Linux and much much more. And the fast moving topics (like HTML) are updated and revised about every 6 months or so. So visit the O'Reilly & Associates web site or stop by your local book store for more info.
And remember if it doesn't say O'Reilly & Associates on the cover, someone else probably wrote it.