I would first look at the card and without too much of an effort or pressure, see what the card tells you. Write your thoughts and feelings and then see what the book meaning says. Always check the book meaning afterwards..... Your intuition counts more than the book's meanings.

If your thoughts and feelings were totally different to that of the book, it does not mean you were wrong; it means that is how the card it spoke to you on that day and on that particular moment of time.

Ok, I'll give it a go - the book is confusing, hopefully I will be buying a better one here soon.

I also highly recommend doing the Tarot tutorial that Seaneen posted. Have you checked it out yet? It's good fun to do and the first thing it tells you, just like Cedars did, is to always go by your intuition on the cards.
So, no learning by heart. Just check the book to find more meanings you might not have thought about at first. And read what others following the tutorial think about the cards without looking them up in any book: you will be amazed at the coincidences, but that is the way Tarot is meant to work: a collection of very universal images that generally bring the same ideas to mind, or very similar. Only very strange decks not based on the more classical ones can give you very different meanings. And that still doesn't mean anything: that deck will have other cards for certain meanings.

Please, try the tutorial and tell us how you do with it. I know you will love it  

An exercise I found helpful some years ago was to contemplate the meanings suggested for some of the major arcana and design a card that symbolized these meanings. If the deck doesn't become more open to you over time that exercise might be of value.