[Blind-sysadmins] Looking for some good books

Can anyone please recommend some good and hopefully current books on C and variants, Visual Basic and variants, and .NET programming in general? I've been outa the biz for so long, I feel my skills creek with rust, and having proper books on these topics would probably be an excellent idea. I have a couple programming projects in mind for myself, but would prefer not to have to rely on age-old knowledge without a handy can of literary educational oil to loosen the rusty knowledge bits. LOL.