Radio Shack used to have a series of books by Forrest Mims, a few $$ ea. intros to theory and circuits. More scholarly works abound and are less beginner friendly but worth while.
There are resources on the web like "Wikopedia" and "allaboutcircuits.com" that explain in plain English the operation and theory behind each application.
Start where WE all did "Ohm's law". Beat it up till you know it cold. If you know two quantities you can figure out the third. Then you can look at "Kurkoffs law" and deal with the specific voltage ( or current ) drop over any circuit node. Sounds fancy but the punch line is you add up all the power used in all the nodes ( a node is a branch of a circuit with all components figured in ) ant that is the total amount of energy used.simple no? Thats for "DC" and "passive " resistance.
Next is "AC circuits" and their equivalent analysis using a kind of variation of ohm's law. The thing with AC circuits is that all the values change over time ( it's AC remember) and the components used, like "inductors "( coils ) and "capacitors" react to those changes.So we don't use resistance any more but "Impedance" which is called Z.
Theres a boatload more I could clog the board up with , but these are your basic jumping off points, all the words in """" are usable in a google search.
Good luck and have fun.
P.S. I've ben in electronics seince age 7 and I learn something new everyday, so You can't be perfect ..........but You can be good
edit to add:
Look at this board and others at 555 timer circuits they kind of encapsulate both AC and DC concepts in 1 circuit ...nifty chip that .