Welcome to the forums soullless. I started with Dark Basic Professional a little over 2 years ago, and I haven't stopped since. Of course, I've expanded to Pascal and C/C++.
I setup a site with a bunch of tutorials.
http://www.curvedbasic.com/
A lot of them are 3D, but there's a few with 2D if that's what you're interested in. If nothing, there's some great pacman and pong tutorials in the newcomers section to help get you started(Might even be a few text based games to help you get started as well).
A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.
(Formerly Yellow)