Learning python data types

[Crane Ugly]

I am not new in scripting in general.
And about a year I create scripts in python, but my approach was always based on my habits from UNIX shell, where data types are not obvious.
Going deeper with python I see necessity to know better data types, differences between them and most importantly when one data type if better then the other, with life examples.
Unfortunately, books I've see so far describe data types in very formal way and without taking into account day-to-day practical aspects.
For example in my practice data rarely hardcoded in the program code and come from files, streams or generated in the program. How to put them together for better processing?
I need some good examples of books or web articles, that can describe language from data processing perspective, not just academical explanations of when language is.

Leonid