[Haskell-cafe] Lists and monads

As a Haskell neophyte, one of the things I find confusing is the way that the usual list functions (map, fold, ++, etc.) often cannot be used directly with monadic lists (m [a] or [m a]) but seem to require special purpose functions like ap, mapM etc. I get the idea of separating pure and impure code but am constantly frustrated by the fact that stuff that would be easy outside a monad seems to get more difficult inside, especially list manipulation. As a result I tend to write ugly recursive list functions that would be more appropriate with Python, say. I suspect that things are not quite as difficult as they appear, however, but cannot find any tutorials on monadic list manipulation. Any suggestions for resources in that area? Kevin