Learn As I Did--Electronic Hobby Magazines

Whenever I'm learning something new, whether it's in electronics or some other subject, I often find it best to go back to the beginning of whatever it is I'm learning about and look for the earliest books on the subject. When something is new, it has to be explained. Often, once the second, third, or later generations of books on a subject come out, they assume that you know something about it, and they start leaving information out. Information that's often critical to getting a beginner rolling.
So, when I wanted to learn about transistors, I got frustrated by the current books that were out. I ended up going back to older books, at that time 10-15 years old, to understand them. I was lucky to be close enough to the beginning of integrated circuits that the earliest books weren't hard to find. And with microprocessors and microcontrollers, I was in the thick of it right from the beginning, so I got to learn them from the ground up, before learning about them got too complicated.
Another place that I found good information was hobbyist magazines. One well written article could get something into my brain easily and pleasantly that I had been trying to figure out for a long time. Among the best for me were the "Hobbyist Specials", magazines that came out annually rather than every month, filled with lots of light do-it-in-an-evening projects. Now, the projects themselves were often riddled with errors. I remember building many that didn't work as published. But, what's important is that I figured out enough to fix the errors myself. So when a dual-transistor LED flasher didn't seem to work, I was able to do a little simple math with my pencil and paper, figure out that the capacitors and resistors they had in the circuit were going to make it flash too fast to see, and I was able to dig out better values from my parts boxes and fix it (and the notation is still in that old magazine today.) I was even able to modify it by fooling around with parts to make one LED stay on longer than the other, and used that effect in Science Fiction costumes, Christmas ornaments, and all sorts of things.
Point is, I learned a lot more than I ever learned from a textbook, or current book on the subject. And now, thanks to the web, you can recreate my early library and then some. Over at American Radio History they have the hobby magazines and technical books I actually learned from (and some of the ones I didn't learn much from, too.) The 99 IC Project and 101 Electronic Project books were my favorites. But in different places they have the early Transistor and IC project books I learned from. Now, I still like books for initial learning more than the web, for a few reasons. One is that it's easier to go back and find something again without going into your browsing history trying to figure out which of 100 sites was the one that the good article was on. Another is that they're better written, and better checked (despite the occasional error in a one night project). Lastly, they deliver their message without distracting ads inserted into the content. Being able to focus, and not have other stuff confusing the flow of knowledge into your head makes it a lot easier. Even if the book is electronic. Other things over there that I recommend are the Don Lancaster Books (under Technical Books), and the TAB and Sam's Books. And yeah, they won't cover the latest microcontrollers, but there's a lot to learn about what you can hook to a microcontroller, or replace a buck and a half microcontroller with a 5 cent part instead. Plus, if you know transistors, you will never be short an inverter for your circuit.