for CCNA, the best book is surely the one from Sybex writen by Todd Lammle !!! 100% sure The guy knows where he is talking about, and that can NOT be said about the cisco books for CCNA The cisco for CCNA books contain (A LOT !!!!!) very stupid errors, they make you get confused all the time, and they are not even clear at all. Sometimes they go way to deep into some subject where it is not needed, while on other more important points they even "forget" to mention basic needs to correctly understand the subject. The book is chaoticly organized with a complex structure (with translation table) that corresponds to their online-course (networking-academy) For example: the chapter 1.2.3 may be 2.6.1 in the book, and 3.4.5 online :-/ this doesnt make since some chapters are trown in at friday just before 5 pm (u know what i mean with that) and other chapters in the networking-academy are not even found in the book. to make it completely complex: they have a version numbering for their books too :-) sounds logical until you found out that book 3.0 corresponds to 3.1 online (or was it reversed?)
The cisco CCNA writers have writen the book with an audiance of kids (stupid dudes) in mind. Things get repeated and repeated and .... yes once more repeated. All things are repeated 3 times troughout the whole book. This makes the book very hard to read and is compareble to "somebook for dummies" or "something-complex in 24 hours". In the end you will NOT have learned a solid foundation to pass the ccna exam !! The book is very dry to read too.
On the other hand, Todd has aranged the book in chapters that are consistent and solid. I have found only one or two typos (not serious errors) Sometimes he puts an amusing line between the text without touching the matter. It makes the book fun to read. His audiance are professionals that want to learn something, and he knows that. He is willing to give all he knows to make your understanding better. (in the cisco book, they keep a lot of important things hidden, as if they dont want you to know how it realy works) Todd is a teacher like a good old grandpa is, he takes the time to learn you something. cisco ccna books are commercial garbage, made to have a book like you can find thousends of those crap.
Todd has been thinking about the setup before he wrote the book. For example: each chapter contains one (or more) basic setups (say 3 routers, 2 switches and some wiring) He uses the same topology troughout the whole chapter so you can easely memorize them and assign the text you are reading to the topology.
to make it short: go buy the book from Todd man