I agree that most of what you read out in the forums and E books is either outdated or something you should take with a grain of salt (opinions and general consensus conclusions do not write algorithms) - there are two links I can provide that will give you the most up to date and accurate information out there:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ - written by an engineer at Google who is the head of their webspam team and has the occasional interviews posted in video format that answer a lot of questions
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ - official answers to questions about Googles search and has some links to some of their group discussions