I can honestly say I learned how to program by reading these books.  A simply fantastic series of books.  Appearing childish at first with their cute little cartoon robots and such, they provide a solid, well-explained introduction to BASIC and machine code programming on 8-bit systems.  They support just about all 8-bit systems and most programs worked with 1K of memory! (anyone remember the ZX81?)  The games were the type-them-in-yourself sort, and were often well worth the trouble.  I've never seen a better set of programming books.  Short, and to the point.  Bigger is not always better.