teaching myself electronics

Ok, so I'm trying to get myself psyched up to learn some basic electronic skills. My initial goal is to be able to make several simple FX, and have them all mounted in an enclosure with all the jacks on the front panel, modular-style. I also am sick of being at the mercy of repair people to fix my broken shit.

So far, I've found these books:



and...


...although the 2nd one seems like it may be crappy, going by the reviews.

I'm still trying to determine if I should read some sort of electronics basics book first. I'm kind of thinking not; I wanna just follow some directions, and hopefully get the fever. For this, Electronic Projects for Musicians seems ideal.

If you've gone from zero electronic skills to fairly-capable, how did you do it?