Luke,
so not only are you not a 'proper electrician' (according to some of the recent posts on this forum), then you are not a proper industrial electrician either
Look at Rum's recent posts, he is an ideal example of an intelligent hard working tradesman that has learned as he has gone along - he started on installations and ended up doing industrial maintenance type work - I went the other way
I was fault finding on auto-synchronous induction motor starter panels when i was 19
now i'm 41, and teaching domestic installers and 2391
your own 'handle' is "if you build it they will come"
stick at it my friend, i'm sure you will get there - just get stuck in where you can
but books? nah - they will be talking vectors and formulas by page two and you will learn nowt
I guess us unqualified monkeys are taking over this site
"ooo, oooo" wheres me banana