[javajosh]

Hmm. Great question. I've always liked Josh Bloch's "Effective Java" because it's targeted toward experienced programmers, and he expressed (correct) opinions about things like immutability. But the book is very old (2001).

One way to get into it is to build something real, first on bare bones (e.g. 'javac Main.java; java Main'), then bare bones Maven, then finally pick a great starting project which itself curates some of the best techniques and libraries currently available for the platform. I am partial to Dropwizard. Do not skip the first two steps though, because if you dive immediately into Dropwizard you'll be disoriented.

I would also suggest avoiding IDEs at the beginning. They hinder more than help at the beginning. One fun thing to do is download the JDK and the docs and source (usually a separate download, alas) and then disconnect your laptop from the internet. See how far you can get with it! Sadly, File IO in Java has always been verbose, but it is probably useful for you to suffer through it.

[CraigJPerry]

The 3rd edition of Effective Java was published in 2017, it's been updated to java 9.

[ulrikrasmussen]

I would still recommend Effective Java, many of its items are still relevant. If you want to avoid being bitten by Java's gotchas, this is the book. Also Java Concurrency in Practice is a must in my opinion.