Are you in the UK, by any chance? I have a tutorial CDROM which I could send you which takes you through pretty much all electronics related stuff - starting from basic electronics theory (voltage, current, resistors, caps) right up through diodes, transistors, some basic A.C Theory, Logic, Combinational Logic, Sequential Logic, flip-flops and etc etc etc.
If you run a PC under Windows (yuck) then this may be an option for you - it's a great home study tool.
Another suggestion I have would be to get yourself a decent electronics simulation program. Then you can try out examples on the computer, rather than spend money on hardware and components only to find the examples in the book ask you to use a different logic chip or different diodes, different transistors and etc etc etc.
I tend to enjoy croc-clips but you can get more complex electronics simulation if you really want to get serious with it. For me, croc-clips does the job for basic simulation and then if I want to get serious I build it in hardware.
Let me know if you want a copy of the CDROM - my email is
BrianJHoskins@usermail.com