Of course there's a ton of books for beginners in electronics, and
many are very good. But, in spite of its title, here is a book that
got 5-star customer reviews in
amazon.com, for being UNUSUALLY EASY to read and to understand, as
well as for having a lot of practical info. It has OPTIONAL
experiments, none of which uses more than two transistors, 2
capacitors, and/or 2 resistors. If at all interested, see customer
revu at amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

You can probably buy a used copy cheaper than new, via amazon (or
similar site), since this has been used as a college (and vocational
sch.) textbook, and students often sell those (to buy more beer!),
even tho they really should keep texts like this, for use when they go
to work.

Dan Shanefield, the author of this book
http://homepage.mac.com/shanefield/Resume1.html