I recommend Programming in Scala: A Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981531644/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... Clear and well written.

Bruce Eckel is releasing a book this year on Scala, Atomic Scala: http://www.atomicscala.com/

Eckel's Thinking in Java was a classic, I suspect he will this one out of the bag too.

The Odersky book is good as a reference, but not a great teaching tool, its too big. I watched the video lectures, they're quite good if a little dry and occasionally quite abstract especially if you're trying to apply Scala to real world problems.

Be warned though interop isn't perfect between Java and Scala, sometimes you have to resort to tricks to make things work, Hadoop APIs being a good example.

Programming in Scala - http://www.artima.com/shop/programming_in_scala_2ed

For more links, visit http://typesafe.com/resources

besides staircase book (the one from Artima.com:

the other good starter book: http://horstmann.com/scala/

detailed looks, all angles: http://www.manning.com/suereth/

There's also Scala for the impatient by Cay Horstmann.

You can get it for free from Typesafe: http://typesafe.com/resources/book/scala-for-the-impatient

Talks, videos, other resources: https://www.assembla.com/spaces/liftweb/wiki/Resources