Find an electronics junkyard somehow, yank out old stuff from your attic or basement that you never use anymore and take them apart. Get neighboors and family members to donate any old electronics stuff they have floating around. Read online a lot to be sure, study all the books you can find, but take apart as many different types and styles of devices as you can get your hands on, and snoop around. Try to identify some of the IC's in the more complicated ones, get a rough idea of where the traces are going to and from, get an idea of how components are connected. You can get more useful components from junk than you can from almost any electronics shop. And definitly practice (and wreck a lot of stuff) soldering and desoldering stuff. If you're serious (even about it as a hobby) get yourself some storage bins. Say portable toolbox size to start with. That's about where I am right now.
Always try to be safe, but people learn more from a badly designed atempt at a circuit that goes up in smoke than from all the math. The math and theory are basically a starting and refineing point. All the fun stuff happens when you plug things in and get results, or smoke. And make no mistake about it, if you even get into electronics as a third tier hobby, there will be smoke. Luckily fire is uncommon =)