I got the most value from Effective Java by Joshua Bloch when learning Java. It's not specifically for beginners, but teaches best practice that would encourage a beginner in the right direction from the start. I suspect there are many instructional Java books that would teach coding practices that would not be considered best practice today.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/

It's unfortunate that colleges and universities collude with textbook publishers to ensure that they use a different textbook/edition each year that can only be bought at the university bookstore. Really you should be able to find out exactly which textbook your course will be using and obtain a copy beforehand.

I just checked the book store and they recommend:

JAVA PROGRAMMING:FROM PROB.ANAL... By MALIK Edition 5TH 12 Publisher: CENGAGE L ISBN: 9781111530532

I appreciate everyone's recommendations, I am still willing to try out everyone's suggestions.

Your CS class will likely recommend a book for you, but my wife used Lewis and Loftus when she took an intro to CS course to get a better handle on what the hell I did with my life. She found it relatively easy to learn from.

Savitch's Absolute Java is reasonable, if a bit expensive.

I found it a tad verbose and slow, but there's many worse. There's a joke in there somewhere.

Check out thenewboston's java tutorials on youtube or go to his site at thenewboston.com

You can also try out Head First Java book.

I started with "Java:Complete reference" but it's definitely not for beginners. It covers a wide array of stuff though

Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel.

Java from the Ground-up