Other options under training include Same Hand Jam, which let's you pick two hole cards (your starting cards) and play nine rounds with them. There's also poker hand rankings and a Texas Hold Em guide.
There are plenty of poker variations, but this particular game only includes Texas Hold Em. To play games such as Omaha or Stud, check out World Championship Poker, which is another good selection.
Quick play allows you to play short games without affecting any games saved in career mode. So if you've kicked butt in career mode, but tank during quick play, your career mode rating remains intact. And the quick play option lets you play with others nearby using a Wi-Fi connection.
Personally, I'm more like that first type. I quest hard until top level, then take a break from it while I work on other things. I quested through Storm Peaks in the Wrath beta, but I haven't done it on live yet. I hit level 80 in Icecrown and haven't done much questing since then, I've mostly been running raids and heroics, finally replacing my level 70 gear. My first goal, though? I wanted the Reins of the Red Drake.
Leveling skinning quickly is a matter of finding ideal circumstances and then getting to work. For example, Horde skinners need only to step outside of Warsong Hold to find a pit full of quick-spawning skinnables associated with several quests. Not only could you knock off those quests, you would be able to reap benefits from everyone else's labors.
While leveling your skill, I recommend staying in the two starting zones, the Borean Tundra and the Howling Fjord. Despite the fact that they are still somewhat crowded, the volume of herb spawns is high, and the difficulty of reaching each mob will be lessened by the fact that the mobs are in the high sixties.
No, according to our buddy Ghostcrawler. He says that Blizzard's goal this time around was to avoid the Karazhan mistake from the last expansion, where players butted their heads up against tougher content in the early endgame. GC says that Blizzard certainly knows how to make tougher content, but they'd rather everyone got a turn this time around.
The vast majority of the books can be found in Scholomance and the Scarlet Monastery, so a run through both of those instances (you can easily solo both at 80) will get you many of the books you need. From there it's time to travel the world -- Brill, Southshore, the Eastvale Logging Camp, Duskwood, and Booty Bay, and a few other places, depending on your faction (Alliance seems to have a little bit of an advantage there, as Stormwind and Orgrimmar have nice libraries. There are a few good books in Undercity, but the Orcs and Tauren aren't much for book learning, apparently).
Still, being able to pre-gather stuff is sometimes pretty cool too, and part of me sort of wishes they had kept some of that in, maybe in that way I've talked about before where you can have around 12k max of your reputation be gathered items, but that they can be turned in at any point in the grind, if only to keep options open.
From World of Warcraft, Eh? comes Cold is Only a State of Mind. I'm Rich! from Dark Legacy Comics. Sam Taylor on leveling. This next entry is not a comic, but an English translation of a German comedic hit, and there are some images.