Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 (See all 3D Graphic Design Books)

Introducing Character Animation with Blender (See all Graphics & Multimedia Books)

Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook

Blender 2.5 Lighting and Rendering (See all Modeling & Simulation Books)

Beginning Blender: Open Source 3D Modeling, Animation, and Game Design (See all Game Programming Books)

Blender For Dummies (See all Introduction to Software Books)

If you can get past the title of this infamous series and admit you're a Dummy when it comes to Blender, by all means check out this book. You'll be taken on an introductory tour of Blender in regards to: interface, transform tools, mesh editing, sculpting, curves, materials and texturing, lighting and rendering, animation and rigging, compositing and editing, etc.

Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition) by Jeremy Birn

The quality of your final renders will largely depend on how well the scene is lit. This great book will provide you knowledge on how to set up basic lighting systems. It will also give you some modeling hints to enhance the realism of your scenes, in regards to light interaction.

Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers

Aside from learning the basics of texturing, the great thing about this book is that it covers some color theory, along with how to make your own textures from photographs. By breaking down exactly what you're seeing, this book will guide you in creating more accurate textures. A tileable texture how-to with Photoshop is also included as an exercise.

The Animator's Survival Kit--Revised Edition: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators by Richard Williams

This is the animator's MUST HAVE book, since 3D animation is simply a sequence of 2D renders. You can learn tons from this "workbook" by using some tracing paper and following along with the endless walk cycle examples alone.