HTML tables are not a good way to format your page. Though maybe they "should work" in all situations, they sometimes don't, and its painful to figure that out. Secondly, you are building a maintenance nightmare. In 6 months, when someone decides the color or font should be a bit different in 2 of the cases because of a special sale, it will be a challenge to figure out this pile of code and to change it.
Write normal <p> text with id and class attributes and use CSS to arrange, size and style them. Lots of books and tutorials are around to show how to do that. External CSS sheets can be structured so its easy to make changes.
Your question is easily answered, probably by you, when you use class attributes. Some class will be used to identify all the hovers you want, any where you want them.
FWIW, I found Headfirst HTML to be an excellent starter book. Just ignore all the stuff they say about XHTML - it didn't fly, and HTML5 is the way to go.