I think most books, in an attempt to be through, get overwhelming for the beginner. I like this:
http://www.ohioqueenbreeders.com/queen_rearing.htm
It's a simple step by step plan and it works fine. After you get this to work, you can move on to the more esoteric concepts.
But here are the MAIN concepts, IMO.
1) In order to get good queens (or sometimes any queens) you need the correct age larvae. There are just after they have hatched. The bees will not build queen cells on cells that have an egg in them. It needs to be a larva and it needs to not be too old.
2) In order to get the bees to build queen cells you need LOTS of bees in the cell starter. If it's not overflowing with bees you won't get very many queen cells.
3) In order to get good queens you need lots of food available. The cell starter needs frames of pollen and nectar.
4) You need to get the timing right. The critical dates are, (measured from the day the queen is confined). One day after you confine the queen you need to release her. Three days after you need to set up a cell builder so it's queenless. Four days after you confine the queen you need to transfer the larvae. Thirteen days after you need to set up the mating nucs. Fourteen days after you confine the queen you need to put the queen cells in the nucs. Twenty eight days after you can check for eggs in the mating nucs.
I don't have either of those books. I do have a lot of books, but most are overwhelming at the beginning. I have Laidlaw's, Snelgrove's, a couple of smaller books, whose authors I forget, both of Jay Smith's books (Queen rearing simplified and Better queens) and, of course, the classic Doolittle's Scientific Queen Rearing, and the handouts from Marla Spivak's queen rearing class.
All of them are interesting reading that makes more sense when you've reared a few queens.
There's nothing wrong with grafting, but I've found the Jenter system (and there are many similar ones) to be quite simple and less dependant on good close-up eyesight.
If I'm grafting, which I usually don't, I like the chinese grafting tool the best, but you need to buy three or four. Usually one will be better than another.
You can also do a searh on here for "Queen rearing" and find many references to books and methods.