Respectfully, Art Of Electronics is not a great choice for OP. AOE is a deep dive with a fast, steep learning curve and while appropriate for a serious student

Respectfully, Art Of Electronics is not a great choice for OP. AOE is a deep dive with a fast, steep learning curve and while appropriate for a serious student (EE?) I would argue it's not appropriate for someone who has no fundamentals and wants to learn to glue major components together. OP needs to learn practical fundamentals in a hands-on fashion -- debouncing a switch or a purpose of a pull-down/up resistor (and how to calculate values), converting signal levels, etc. We forget how steep the learning curve can be and how likely it is to turn students away when every page is a baffling struggle focused on topics with purposes which are not germane / not clearly related to the learner's wants. AOE is the equivalent of a music theory book for someone who wants to play "happy birthday." Or Knuth's series for a beginning coder.