TITLE: A learning roadmap for Representation Theory
QUESTION [70 upvotes]: As Akhil had great success with his question, I'm going to ask one in a similar vein.  So representation theory has kind of an intimidating feel to it for an outsider.  Say someone is familiar with algebraic geometry enough to care about things like G-bundles, and wants to talk about vector bundles with structure group G, and so needs to know representation theory, but wants to do it as geometrically as possible.
So, in addition to the algebraic geometry, lets assume some familiarity with representations of finite groups (particularly symmetric groups) going forward.  What path should be taken to learn some serious representation theory?

REPLY [10 votes]: All of these recommendations are very good, and I'd like to add that the book D-Modules, Perverse Sheaves, and Representation Theory (which you can download at the provided link if you have institutional access; otherwise you can get it from, say, Amazon) contains some very good introductory chapters (chapters 9, 10, and 11) on the various sorts of things one would want to know in representation theory and algebraic geometry. The whole book is quite good if you're interested in the D-modules/perverse sheaves side of the story, but even if you're not interested in that, those particular chapters might be of interest.