> The problem was the author would show some code sand say 'see how easy it is to do this, and this, and this!', but I'd look at the code and have no idea whatever what it was doing or how it was doing it, and the guide/tutorial wouldn't tell me. After a few tries, I just gave up.

You're better off learning OCaml or F# for a small project or two, honestly. The jump from pure procedural to pure functional is big enough without also dragging in laziness, type classes, and monads.