[roystonvassey]

I (re-) developed a strong fascination for Physics last year after chancing upon Feynman's QED lectures. It was such mind-boggling stuff and I realized that that was just one level at which nature behaved in utterly magical ways (think - cosmological scales, the question of gravity, unified theory etc).

After trying to scour and even reading many books in this area, most that are either highly abstracted for the 'pop-sci' reader (like me, with no training in physics) or were all-out textbooks, I chanced upon Susskind's lectures and the Theoretical Minimum series. I started off right from the basics and IMHO, it has the right balance between introducing concepts and making sure you internalize them by having you actually work on problems (highly recommend that you don't skip these). I am nowhere near close to understanding any of this yet but it gave me at least an orientation for what to expect and how to prepare. Once I get a bit of time and the interest back again, I expect to go back to the other books in the series.