When I started as a teenager, the only book you could find was Eden Gray's book. She actually wrote three, but they are all basically rehashing the same thing. Those were fine for me for years, but were I to advise someone starting out now, I'd recommend Tarot Plain and Simple and the back section of Tarot For Youself, and the Joan Bunning book for meanings. To understand them as a whole, I'd recommend 78 Degrees of Wisdom.
I wouldn't get hung up on accumulating books full of meanings. Tarot Plain and Simple has plenty of those alone. Bunning whittles them down to basic keywords, but then has lessons building up the complexity in a useful way.
Before you get hung up on meanings, I strongly urge you to read Paul Huson's Mystical Origins of the Tarot, which shows how the cards evolved over history, and really opened me up to how subjective and frankly arbitrary the accepted meanings can be. For history, I also recommend the book A Wicked Pack of Cards, though it is pretty irreverent for some tastes.
I also urge you to read Mary Greer's book about reversals. It cured me of being intimidated by reversals. it kind of rehashes the meanings in Tarot For Yourself, but elaborates a little. I don't have the attention span for workbooks like the front part of Tarot For Yourself, though.
But if you just want to get cracking, the lessons in Bunning's book are great.
However, if you could only get one book about learning how to read Tarot, I would tell you to get the terribly titled The Easiest Way to Learn the Tarot --Ever!!! by Dusty White. The title makes me wince, and it looks for all the world like self-published flimflam, but that book can put you in touch with your cards in ways I've not experienced with any other book. I suspect his and Bunning's book, while on the surface coming from different perspectives, would be a winning combination for beginners.