Reddit reviews Molecular Biology of the Gene (6th Edition)

Molecular biology of the cell (http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815341059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367877862&sr=8-1&keywords=molecular+biology+of+the+cell) and molecular biology of the gene (http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Gene-James-Watson/dp/080539592X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367877885&sr=1-1&keywords=molecular+biology+of+the+gene) are two excellent resources for understanding genetics. If reading is what you're looking to do, begin with peer reviewed journals; textbooks become outdated quickly, but peer-reviewed journals give you a glimpse into the ideas which allowed us to better understand biological phenomena.

The best way to understand genetics is to become actively involved in such matters. Attend seminars with speakers working in cell or molecular biology fields. Get involved in research (this is by far the best thing you can do to improve your understanding of genetics).

Good luck!

Honestly, the field changes so fast that it'd be hard to have a "comprehensive" text book stay relevant. Most of the time we're reading and discussing academic papers from the past ~5 years, occasionally referencing significant results from further back.

http://www.amazon.com/Population-Genetics-A-Concise-Guide/dp/0801880092 is a good book to start with though to build up a good foundational understanding of how people are thinking about and studying evolution (or at least the people I'm working with), assuming you already have some basic familiarity with population genetic principles.

edit: When starting grad school several years ago, this is the textbook we used for the molecular biology courses we had to take. The degree program I'm in is Computational and Molecular Biology (where students are either in Comp or Mol bio, but there's some overlap in the first semester. I'm in Comp, so most of my coursework is in math/cs/stats), so I can't say what graduate level Evolutionary Biology courses require.

Let me recommend An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits by Uri Alon. This book is extremely well-written and approaches cellular systems from the perspective of an engineer or physicist. It will help to orient you to the "big picture" of how cells work without swamping you in molecular details. Systems biology is a hot, emerging field at the intersection of molecular biology, biophysics, and computational biology. Feel free to PM me if you're interested in the field and want a few suggestions about which are the top labs.

I would recommend getting more information about the molecular details elsewhere. I haven't read Alberts, but it seems like a classic text (I often see it on bookshelves). I read Watson's Molecular Biology of the Gene, and thought it was quite good.

For a biochemical perspective, I recommend Stryer's Biochemistry, which covers many common biological molecules. It is a very readable classic and serves as a good reference text. It should give you an idea of how the molecular machines operate on a chemical level.

You can probably find these in your school's library.

Edit: Just realized this post is 3 months old (hah). Hope this helps nevertheless.