Ask TheStreet: Bid Bewilderment

And nowadays the commissions on trades are almost equal to the shipping costs of ordering books online, so it's not prohibitively expensive to get started either.

What most people do need is the confidence to get started, and that's something you can't order on Amazon.com.

My advice for beginners is to take a small amount of money -- money they can afford to lose -- and buy a few shares of a single stock to get their feet wet. Once you select a stock and start tracking it every day online or in the newspaper, you will learn more about Wall Street than what a book could teach you. You will also learn the questions to ask, so when you do go out and buy those books on investing to supplement your education, you will buy the ones that fit your needs.

Once again, I have nothing against books on investing. I read them all the time. But I guarantee they'll be much more enjoyable once you are out there playing the game and not just reading about it.