Perhaps one of the coolest features of this site is the tremendous wealth of information available at your finger tips. And as I understand it, some pretty incredible research tools are available to those who elect to become a paid member. And personally, I think a majority of the books available for sale today probably got a good bit of their content from this web site.
As far as books are concerned, my suggestion is to read the suggestions and ideas. Watch how the various folks here do work-outs. Many try really hard to provide you with enough data so that you can do the work-outs on your own. Also, since you indicate your in Houston (am assuming TX and not GA), there are a good number of folks here that watch the TX games and can maybe help offer some insight.
Finally, in regards to the huge quantity of numbers listed. My personal opinion is to find a way to seek out common threads among the numbers. If a multitude of folks seem to keep providing relatively similiar numbers for an upcoming game, who knows, it just might be the one to play. Who knows, you may create a unique method of your own to help select a winning number.
And in closing, set yourself a maximum daily dollar limit of what you are willing to lose and force yourself to stay with it. I am trying really hard to stay within the $5 a game limit myself. For the time being, it works for me and has forced me to do a better job selecting numbers (2 real hits this month so far). Find yourself a system that will work for you, but keep yourself open to review different ways to observe other systems to perhaps improve upon your own system. I am quite sure you could ask 20 people for a system they like and you will most likely get back 20 different systems, each customized to his/her taste or way of thought.
Sir Metro