Trying to get started with algorithms

Hey people,

Okay, so I've been coding and programming for a while in various languages but I wanted to take up algorithms.

So I tried to begin learning, and I thought to myself how wonderful would it be if there was a good book that introduces this subject. Well, I started reading Cormen's book Introduction to Algorithms (which sounds perfect but it was more of an Introduction To Hell). It was really heavy, so I tried over and over and over and read the same paragraphs a lot of times, and there were 3 lines of code that I tried to understand what they meant and it took me 1 hour to try and understand them (and finally give up. I still don't know they mean).

Anyways, I decided I shouldn't learn from this book and I should find something else, but I don't want a reference type of book. I need something that would teach me how to think in way of algorithms.

When I first tried to learn recursion I was at a loss with a basic exercise, but then a friend gave me a hint and from that one single hint I could later solve a lot of different problems just because I got the idea / that way of thinking.

Anyways, I just have a few questions:

• Can you recommend a book that's simple and easy? (I've been thinking to try Sedgewick's book, would you recommend it?).
  
• Any tips? warnings?
  
• Anything else you think I should know? (what would have you told yourselves at the beginning?)