Books? Yes--
THIS one I swear by. The author takes a very good and RATIONAL look at investing, it is the best guide I have found.
Basically, the idea is to completely avoid individual stocks. What you want is a total cap mutual fund. That way you basically own every stock there is, and thus your returns are exactly what the stock market as a whole does. This means you cant have any better-than-the-market years--but you also cant have any that are worse. And in the long run, it does better than smaller funds or picking individual stocks, by far. Many funds will outdo the market one year, but there is NO way to accurately predict which ones will, and they very rarely do it for more than one year running.
I strongly suggest that book. He has a longer one out that goes more in depth into it if you are interested--A Random Walk Down Wall Street. The one in the link above is a shortened version with more to do with personal finance rather than the more philosophical approach to the market that the longer book takes.