Required reading in electronics

What book or books would you recommend for someone starting in electronics? Personally I have plenty of hardware and software experience as a user of computers for the last 25 years but I don't know much about how to even chose a resistor for a given LED. 25 years and I feel like I don't know anything!

I just finishing the DC portion Lessons In Electric Circuits at Lessons In Electric Circuits but need more to read!

Wow what a great list, Thanks Daniel. I looked at the Art of Electronics and was reminded of my days at CSUN, class books are pricey :o ! If I did order that would the Study book be worth the extra money? Are Forrest M. Mims III's other books worth buying? Also are there any online sites I should look at? Maybe we should put together a syllabus for beginners listing just this sort of info?

I have started a section for electronics books in the Playground:

http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/Electronics

Feel free to add other entries.

if you wanna go really cheap
go to http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/
it's a good compromise between theory and practice
be sure to hop back and forth from the volume you want to read and the correspondent chapter
in the volume VII - experiments
it helped me a lot.

although I would suggest as well tom igoe's book. very comprehensive and cut down to designers minds, even if it doesn't have arduino examples it's very easy to port to them

hope it helps
cheers
b.

I've never gone wrong with Sherz's "Practical Electronics for Inventors". It's out in a new edition, with lots more theory than anyone could possibly swallow, unless you're going for a Phd. I recently upgraded to the second edition myself, and have found more than a couple of typos... but it's still a great resource.

j

Looks like Slashdot got the same question and some good answers, Methods of Learning to Build Electronic Circuitry? Methods of Learning to Build Electronic Circuitry? - Slashdot