you should read books on how SEs work, rather than SEO. learn what they look for as basic and you will cover a good 70-80% of what you need to know.
like others said, most of the info in books is outdated because of the time it takes to print. people that know SEO are either 1) greedy and never want to share info or 2) to lazy to share the info and have to really motivate them to get it
best thing you can do imo is read forums and try stuff out. basic SEO is not that difficult and will get you good results