Sorry to barge in. But having spent some time learning R I would point at one strange thing.

Books on R (there are plenty) are generally well-written and are mostly in "example based" style. But they all don't start from start. They assume that you have some familiarity with it (or S) or don't need to know the language, just commands. R documentation refers to S manual (which I cannot find on Internet) very often as well. And that makes things slightly longer than really necessary.
If you take, for example, "The R Book" the introduction to language is terrible - it refers to items described later in text (just tell me who invented this style as I encounter it so often).

Out of all, probably the smoothest book is "Data Analysis and Graphics Using R: An Example-based Approach" by Maindonald.
Perhaps, somebody would recommend something else better.