#i like highlighting while reading though so im happy i bought a physical copy of that one specifically

[aevris]

No idea if this person follows me BUT while the industry standard for GIS software (ArcGIS pro) is incredibly expensive, there are open source alternatives like QGIS. A lot of governments and organizations also have open data portals that you can grab data from (shapefiles, CSVs, rasters, whatever).

I've kind of been taught ground-up in person so I don't have recommendations on video tutorials for teaching basic concepts sadly. Bolstadt GIS fundamentals is good and was dirt cheap by textbook standards though (was like $40 iirc).

"Learning GIS" I guess also depends on what you want to do with it? If you want to mess around with cartography and data visualization you could probably just give yourself some pet projects.