>Any good books on this whole query and data optimization topic

Sorry, I don't know what books to recommend. Don't take me wrong, there are plenty of good books around, I just did not read them. I believe some good reader will give you couple titles right here.
However, you may ask any specific questions on this forum, also you may search UT. All these questions were discussed here, and if you want you may start new discussion where lots of good people will be ready to participate: query-optimization is one of the Fox favourite topics.