| Ok no matter what distribution you use try this site. It shows demos with animated gif's and comments. It shows you it's specific installer but I think they are all similar(at least in some of what they go through I found redhats install simlar). It also shows you how to do a bunch of things like setup a network, etc via thease animations and what the desktops are like, etc.
To get the iso's to burn once you choose your distribution you want go here It also has info on the various distributions and you can even sort the types by what class they are(i386, i486, i586, i686 and ones that give those numbers and say for example i486 and above)
Now information on various distributions as well as listing them all and comparing them, reviews, etc try this site.
Finally I started with mandrake myself and I've also tried redhat. I think they are the two most common ones for newbies. Some though still have problems with both of those.(both of them btw are related as mandrake grew out of redhat and originally was a redhat tweaked for pentium class computers and also made for newbies) There are many distribs some quite neat in what they offer alot of things they share in common as well. However a few are more complex to install and learn. Some in that catagory are gentoo, slackware, and debian.(I've not had much chance to look at debian but I like both gentoo and slackware though currently using mandrake 9 for now)
As for books for newbies on linux I suggest Voodoo Unix tips and tricks. It's written in plain english, gives examples, etc and isn't some huge 20lb type book. It's easy to make sense of.
Finally online there are some info pages. The linux document project is one and it has how to's... and there is a site for linux newbies. | 
