Here's some suggested reading, which will help you programming in Visual Basic. Click on the book (or hyperlink) and you can buy it online! I checked the prices of each, and it's quite reasonable.
If you haven't started with VB yet, I think you should start with a few tutorials. While this one won't teach you the entire language of BASIC, it will show you how to work in the VB environment (and the mentalities of event driven code). Makes a great place to start!
Visual
Basic 6 Master Reference
This book is a nice, easy to read guide for using the standard controls in VB6. It doesn't document 100% of every control (a book like that would be 3 feet thick), but it does make a good attempt at documentation that's easy to find. Remember "Master Reference" doesn't mean "COMPLETE reference". But seriously, if you hate using the online help - this may be very useful to you.
Dan
Appleman's Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API
This is an excellent book that gives you a strong grasp on how API calls work, and how you can call them from VB. Now no book on the market can give you the ENTIRE Win32 API, but this books gives you a nice chunk of the commonly used API calls. This book has seen a few revisions, mainly to include info on the newer versions of VB. Please note that if you bought a prior revision of Dan's Win32 API guide (like for VB5) - you won't need to buy the updated book (it's essentially the same).
Dan
Appleman's Win32 API Puzzle Book & Tutorial for VB
This book goes beyond the examples in the Win32 API book. This one is geared to show you how to build applications using the Win32 API. For the API documentation, get the Win32 API book. If you want more examples, get this book.
Visual
Basic for Network Applications
This book is designed to give you some basic examples of API techniques for network applications. Some examples are using WNetAddConnection to establish connections and WNetCancelConnection to drop them. The book's functions are more geared for the Win16 API, but it's a great start on writing network apps. BTW, don't be surprised when you see that the book is rather thin - but it's under $30 and worth the cost.