Two parter: Django book recommendation + Django real world advice
I Just finished the Practical Django Projects (for version 1.1)as mentioned in piquadrat, Travis' and Alasdairs' answers. I had a lot of aha moments and many more I'll need to get back to that again to fully digest moments.
When James Bennet, the author gets the code samples into the Mercurial repository on BitBucket it will improve my overall rating of the book since you will presumably be able to test the code as it progresses through the book (only the first three chapters' code is up there at the moment). The last sections of the book on development methods are in particular very helpful. 
If you decide to buy the book, it's a good excuse to learn the basics of revision control with Mercurial.
I believe in picking up operating projects and working them though, helps me learn better and also seeing good practices. A new pretty comprehensive blog engine is Mingus on bit bucket, worth a look, still early stage, but is teaching me a lot, there are others take your pick.
First question:
   What is your favorite Django book or online learning material? CodeProject examples + Django documentation, O'Reilly, etc.
Second Question: What are some good tips and advice you have picked up along the way which helps you to use Django more effectively? Certain design patterns, language idioms, frameworks which tie into Django well, etc.
Thanks!