When I was little, I would play with a rubiks cube for hours, to no avail. Then,it changed. Some random guy at the park was solving it. He told me about the book he learned from, the simple solution to rubik's cube. He gave me a scanned copy of it. I learned a LBL method, but with corners then edges last layer, solving both of them permutation then orientation. Since then I have tried out all the main 4 methods, and have settled on Roux.
I also use my own method for 4x4, see my sig for links.