ColdFusion and Python

Within a year (by next Spring) I need to know these two languages. What books would you guys recommend that does a good job in teaching them? In general, im more of a book person to get the basis of the language as long as the book is reader friendly. Ill read the book and follow the code and do it on my computer. Once the book is read, I will start fully diving in the language and start doing "very cool" things....

Im no programming guru, but I have the general understanding of:
VB 6.0 (yeah never got into the .NET version that is OO)
C#
JAVA
ASP.NET (obviously HTML goes with ASP as well)

It doesnt matter what language I start out with. A general understanding is all im going for in these languages. Just a familiarity how the syntax goes, what the rules are, etc. Mostly I need to be able to read this code more than anything. Once I have this knowledge, Google becomes my new friend

I don't know a thing about Coldfusion, but as far as Python goes:

Official website tutorial written by the language creator - http://docs.python.org/tut/

Dive Into Python (free book available in pdf, html etc.) - http://www.diveintopython.org/

I don't actually know of any paper-only books for Python. I picked it up through tutorials and necessity. That said, Dive Into Python is a short but full book and is organized as such.

For ColdFusion, check out Ben Forta or Ray Camden writings/books. Both are very knowledgeable and you will learn a lot from them quickly. There's some good books Adobe puts out (I think Forta wrote them) that will get you started quickly. After you get the basics down, take a look a look at some of the great frameworks out there like Fusebox or Mach II.

The python docs&tutorial are the place to start. The library documentation isn't nearly as good as java, but its ok.

I really like this book as a reference: Amazon: Python Essential Reference

O'reillys programming python i don't like at all, id advise not getting it. Python cookbook is ok, but i wouldn't recommend it either when starting out.

I'm a 'learn by example/code' person and found these books helpful: Python
ColdFusion. I personally own the Python book and have a copy of the CF book at work.

+1 for Forta