This book is one such guide, and does its job as well as a book can. However, even that is not enough to make learning VB.Net painless. There are so many diagrams in the book that it ultimately ends up being long and tedious. But I don't fault the book, as it's the best I've ever seen for this type of subject. It's just that a book can't do justice for the language as well as a classroom.

For self-study, I would recommend not a book but a CBT (computer-based training) course. Instead of making the student wade through pages and pages of screenshots, a CBT course animates the process of creating a program, and tests him or her at key points along the way. However, CBT courses aren't cheap. As a paper alternative, this is the only book I could recommend for the beginning Visual Basic student.