I'm a beginner with a basic/rudimentary knowledge of electronics. I'm keen
to learn about circuits, digital electronics and building my own circuits.
Any book recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Without knowing you better, it is hard to say. But I'll take a shot.
One of the recommendations you already have is The Art of Electronics,
by Horowitz and Hill. The book is pretty good (and I definitely
recommend getting the 2nd edition -- 1989.) For someone new and
teaching themselves, it starts out at the right place but moves at a
steady pace that may be rather too quick, eventually. If you _also_
get the Student manual for it, published separately, then it goes from
pretty good to darned excellent as a good self-teaching set. At
times, I've found much needed design methods that helped me understand
the book material better only there in the student manual. So I also
recommend adding that, if you plan to get the big book, too.
For other general electronics stuff, you could look to older teaching
materials, periodically updated, which will cover many of the details
quite well. For example, there is the Naval Electrical Engineering
Training Series which is available completely for free (or was, on
9/4/2006) at:
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm
Some of the material will have some dated phrases in it, but it does
cover a lot of the basics for electronics.
For digital electronics, I'd recommend looking for earlier books on
the subject (once ICs were available), as well. It is in those
materials that you will often find __more__ explanation, because the
field was newer and the audience more likely to need a slower pace.
One example is Don Lancaster's two volume set, Micro Cookbook. The
parts will be __very old__ by today's standards, but Don's skill at
mixing drawings and cartoons with text is good and I found it quite
easy to follow for the entire way through them, back when I first
picked them up decades ago. Another fun one is Bebop Bytes Back, An
Unconventional Guide to Computers, if you might be interested in how a
CPU or microcontroller works inside. At the same time, it does teach
some of the basics of digital electronics.
But digital electronics also requires you to learn about various
digital technologies, such as RTL, DTL, TTL, CMOS, etc. Some of these
include further refinements or cross-overs, such as LS TTL (low power
schottky) and AHCT (advanced high-speed cmos with ttl inputs.) RTL
was an early digital technology but it is still used (with some easy
analog design rules) in conjunction with today's digital electronics
in discrete form outside a micro, for example. I don't have a
recommendation for a book that covers all this well, but would be
interested to see one recommended to you.
In addition to all the rest, there are some seminal application notes
available from various IC manufacturers -- I'm thinking here of some
on operational amplifiers, in particular -- that are very much worth
getting. I think some of the others here may have these links at
their fingertips.
Search the web for explanations as you learn terms related to them,
too. Sometimes, you will get some great pages to help. (You also
have available a very good and free Spice simulator program from
linear.com.)
Jon