If your instructor wants to sometime loan the ”Compleat”, sit up and pay attention.
If he needs to loan it first, stop paying him.
And indeed, basically you learn and train the art in the saddle (or: on the spurs), but Mr. Plourde's book is by far the best I ever read on the subject. It helps enormously to understand why you need to do everything as instructed, and that others found out already what happens if you don't.