I bought the trevor tom books before starting my training and read the first book, aircraft handeling i think cover to cover before sitting in the plane for my first time, and in fairness, i forgot everything i had read and leart 10x more in the first hour of actual instruction!
i found the met book usefull and navigation one to help me brush up on stuff in an evening, but for me it was on the job learning, pay attention, ask lots of questions and hang around the flight school talking to students behind and infront of you.
theres no substitute for doing the job, I went through the question banks before taking the tests and got high marks, but you learn by doing, the first thing we did on my first lesson was sit down and do a weight and balance and explain why its important and the forces acting due to correct and incorrect loading, and that one hour ground helped me so much with principals of flight, flight planning (fuel!) and all sorts.