I want to learn how to give a great massage

Always give happy endings.

Practice practice practice

(I volunteer)

Try Massage for Dummies by Steve Capellini.

I used it to learn enough to give my girlfriend and two of her friends massages. They liked my attempts well enough that they strongly encouraged me to look into getting into a CMT program.

There are a lot of different styles of bodywork, but I'm assuming you're just talking about plain-old Swedish massage, like you'd get at a spa, yes? Strengthen your hands. Very important that you have a strong grip, and can really get in deep. To really push, though, use your body weight by centering your torso over your hands. Don't try to just use your arms, or you'll end up hurting your back.

Really, the easiest thing to do is just get a bunch of books from the library, and go on youtube and look for how-to videos. My books are in storage just now, or I'd give you some recommendations. You'll find after a while that most non-textbook massage books out there have a lot of the same information, but by the time you start to recognize the repetition, you'll probably know the material. Also, there are sites out there like Videojug that offer How-To videos. There are better ones than videojug, but I can't recall them just now. If I think of them, I'll post them here. And yes, to get good, practice is essential. I doubt you'll have problems finding willing subjects, though.

I'm kind of a massage nerd, so I'll probably come back later with some more practical information, but it's dinner time right now, so you'll have to hold on a bit :)