I’ve often had this experience: certain technical topics look extremely difficult to break into. No matter how many standard resources and popular content that you read through, every one of them seems to speak a foreign language. I’ve felt this while studying topics like complex numbers, Fourier’s transform, relativity, to name a few. I am of the opinion that either I’m too dumb or writers of many popular expositions on such topics have not understood it clearly.
I read ‘the checklist manifesto’ by Atul Gawande. I am a firm believer in books and advice in general from anyone in practice oriented profession: doctors, investors (not speculators), pilots and so on. The professinals in these fields have generally a large skin in the game (money, reputation, their own life), making their advice worthy as compared to academic advise. The checklist book was then just the right fit for a lazy afternoon reading at once.