Done with "core" Java , but now...

My situation : hobbyst developer with some prior experience ( C# XNA) , cover to cover these books :

  1. HF Java
  2. The terrifying 1300 pages brick : “Introduction to Java programming” by Y.Liang
    The problem : now i’m facing things like building ,deploying , xml , Maven , Ant , etc…etc…
    and i find all this stuff incredibly boring.
    My question : i have to resign and dive into these icy waters , or i can somehow avoid this punishment ?

Thanks a lot for any tip !