I avoided reading philosophy books for a long time. Since you, like me, are the product of a computer age (we're using computers), and I believe humans work best with analogies, I would start with: a) a basic book on computers and computer logic. A lot of philosophy involves logic. b) a book on common terms you will find in philosophy. A lot of information can be gotten by definitions: They often represent "distilled wisdom", that is - the experience of thousands of years of thinking can be compressed into a few words by a good definition that is well written. c) look up several definitions of some of the words. d) Then I would start with books on early philosophers. If you are studying Western Philosophy, which a lot of philosophy you might want to study will be based on, I would go back to the ancient Greeks. There's no need for the original books at first; youtube videos should be fine. *then* you can start diving into some books on other Philosophers. You can get used to the family of names as well. There are charts you can find on Google images that will show you "this philosophy influenced that philosopher who influenced that philosopher". There are "schools of philosophy", different groups that philosophers are often categorized in. You might want to consider some books on different forms of logic, especially as they are used in Philosophy. It's not that that logic is more important than philosophy. Rather, it's so you will be familiar with the "terms" that are used in philosophy a lot. They can be very confusing. Philosophy has its own special unique coded language that's a little different.