Any pointers regarding how to best learn it? Any books you recommend I get and/or shy away from?
(Also note I have done almost no functional programming, so books that really teach how to think that way are also appreciated.)
Steer clear of the Artima book: its huge, out of date and not written particularly well.
The O'Reilly book is great.
Also keep in mind that several important changes or additions to the language have been made with version 2.8, and many books aren't up to date.
I would recommend getting a copy of both of them, but you might want to check out the online version of the O'Reilly book before buying it:
http://programming-scala.labs.oreilly.com/
The Pragmatic Programmers book is not bad either, but it's only a short introduction to the language compared to the other two books mentioned.
All three books have nearly identical titles: Programming (in) Scala
The Pragmatic book is a very gentle intro which makes the type and object systems seem like a ruby- or python-learning exercise. It's not. The Oreilly has the most comprehensive info, and is also quite blunt about 2.7's shortcomings (the animal-trap icons). It's a very dense read but I think it's definitely on the path of least resistance (i.e. not reading it will make learning the language more difficult. Course there's no reason not to read it free, online.
The Artima book, IMHO is really a nice introduction, explains clearly but keeps going at a good pace. It's just a lot to read. The Artima book is also one of the only well-indexed software books I've ever countered, kudo's to authors and production people for that, that's a huge time-saver.
On a side note - Scala is not my fav. JVM language because, personally, its in the same class as Perl and C++. Where syntax is concerned Clojure is much cleaner.