Of course, there are dozens of books for beginners in electronics, and many are very good. But here is a book that got 5-star customer reviews in amazon.com, for being UNUSUALLY EASY to read and to understand (in spite of its title), 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. The book explains transistors, amplifiers, noise, digital versus analog, decibels, filters, etc., all in simple terms (but with very-much simplified experiments which are described as examples).