I wasted so many years trying to learn electronics from books when this is one subject that cannot be mastered without practical work. If reading from books you should at the very least grab yourself a copy of LT Spice and simulate to death absolutely every circuit you read about until you understand what's going on in each one. Do not move on until you do because a firm grasp of the basics is what will take you far in this field. After you've analysed each circuit go hunting online for the devices you used in your simulation and look at their data sheets. Find out through internet research what the most important datasheet characteristics are for different types of devices in different applications (e.g. transistors), for example a MOSFET datasheet might be ten pages long but for digital applications you might only care about only 5 characteristic values on the entire datasheet and never have to look at anything else on there. If you can identify what sort of space you are working in you can cut down the time it takes you to work things out by a lot.
I've found that a good way to learn electronics systematically is not to think about components but to think about requirements and applications in industry. An example in the digital domain: most things have a button on them, so start by wiring a basic momentary switch to a microcontroller and code it to count the signal and output in binary on a bank of LEDs. Now look online to try and find how you might make a latching signal in hardware from a momentary switch signal. Simulate it on LT Spice. Build this new circuit to confirm the signals. Now, wire this into the enable pin of a basic linear regulator IC and get it to latch power on/off to your bank of LEDs. Next try a switch circuit allowing you to perform a short-press latches on, long-press latches OFF function. Etc. As long as you are patient and take time to simulate and understand each signal the understanding of the components themselves should drop into place, at least in my experience.