Of course there's a ton of books for beginners in electronics. 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:
(If link doesn't work, go to amazon, search books for shanefield, and click Customer Revu.) You can probably buy a used copy cheaper than new, via amazon, 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