Ask HN: How useful is buying a book for learning a framework / technology?

I am a PHP web developer and I mainly deal in Codeigniter or CakePHP. I have tried a lot of times to learn Django but I am never able to cross the initial hurdle. Last time it went like, opened Django ebook + docs, went ahead up to fivish modules, couldn't get my head around a very peculiar app, website abstraction, unable to get a basic user registration and login set up, I ditched it and was back to PHP. I think the problem is, the online material is somewhat lacking in practical examples on how to get started and this is not only with Django. I had the same problem with Symfony, C# and Haskell. I lose interest pretty fast once I am unable to build something or find something to build with technology.

Does anyone else feel the same problem? Does buying a book help? I think offline reading can be more pleasing than scrolling through web pages. There is an argument against books that things like Django change a lot in short time and book is outdated before you buy it.