How do I login as root on MySQL on OS X?

Question

I've just set up MySQL on my computer (OS X 10.7), and it seems to be working, judging by the "mysqld" in the activity monitor and the new icon in my System Preferences.

However I'm having trouble doing anything with MySQL, as I need to login at least as the root user, but it doesn't let me. So let's run through what I've been doing and what error messages I'm getting:

Firstly, I start up MySQL via the "mysql" unix executable file. This seems to work, as my entries are now preceded with

 mysql> 

Also, I can type

 help;

and I get MySQL's help list. So then I go to do something, like create a database:

 CREATE DATABASE books;

but I get the following error:

 ERROR 1044 (42000): Access denied for user ''@'localhost' to database 'books'

So then I figure I need to login, and that logging in as the root user should be enough. I enter the following:

 mysql -u root -p;

But I get the 1064 error saying my syntax is wrong. I've had a look around through a number of websites, and this never seems to be a problematic step. Any clues on what's going wrong for me?