I CSS for layouts, however I have given using tables for layouts a shot, and personally find CSS much easier to deal with for layouts, and much more versatile. I don't find table based layouts any easier to setup initially, and I find updating them to be a massive headache compared to CSS. Tables are bad for layouts for a number of reasons anyhow.
There are a ton of CSS books out there, some worth checking out are:
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML is a good one to start out with.
Also
Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide
and once you've gotten a decent grasp on CSS
the Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
is a good book to check out