Hey, Chris:
Good question! At one point when I started my journey in learning Java, I thought that you were suppose to read one book cover-to-cover and be prepared for a
test on Monday. One, I realized that my brain rebelled in that the more I read, the less I remembered. And, two, putting your hands on the keyboard and practicing examples from books and web tutorials, go a lot further in learning to code in any language or Framework. So, for JDevelopr, I would go through the tutorial on the Oracle OTN site. For Flex, I would start with "Learn Flex In A Week," from the Adobe website.
Hope that helps.