DJ- both of those books are excellent but as you've come to learn they only cover small portions of a huge subject area. If you want to have some fun and build things I'd offer the following ideas:
1. Go to Radio Shack and pick up one of their books on electronics. They have one that is pretty general, not very in-depth at all but that described tried/true circuits that will make noises, blink lights, etc. They used to have digital circuits, op-amps, general science stuff. One might argue that they aren't useful - my response would be that they take you thru the learning process in smaller steps. Get those to work then move on to more complicated stuff.
2. Pick a subject area, as it seems you have. Surf around and look for projects. Some people have done a wonderful job at not only describing the circuit but describing the construction details on things like simple receivers.
3. Essentially the same thing as #2 but look in Amazon, Borders, the library (they do still exist) and you'll find lots of published books on various electronics subjects. There must be a thousand electronics books that could have the title "Easy Electronics Projects". Nut's & Volts magazine was pretty good - Poptronics might be the new name for what used to be Popular Electronics.
4. Build one thing at a time and get that to work first. The transmitter/receiver pair might not be the place to start unless you have a way to test one of them without the benefit of the other. Doing two at once might make you nuts, trying to figure out which of the two isn't quite right.
5. Consider some of the simple kits even if they only blink lights, make a noise, etc. They do have some nice, moderately priced receiver kits - ham band or shortwave. Ocean State Electronics (I think) has several nice but simple AM radio kits - as well as an AM/FM kit - designed for learning though they can be put to use when finished.
Just some thoughts to help you along.