Dealing with files

I am currently ploughing my way through some VB.net books for beginners (as I am very much so). I have finished John Smileys book where he, and other books say, writing and reading from files is very important skill to learn. One book uses the FileOpen function and another uses the StreamReader class. One book doesn't even cover the subject.

I am a little confused as to which one to learn and hopefully master. I find the explinations in the books I have bought very unclear. For example, using a text file to store data for an array. Which file opening operation would be more convenient of efficient?

Any comments will be appreciated and perhaps a good book as I have 4 now I think.