I'll second this book, but also recommend Grob's Basic Electronics. Also very expensive...
...but that last bit has a caveat: These books are only expensive if you opt for "the latest edition". If you are doing this at a hobby level (vs taking a dedicated college course or similar), purchasing an older edition will serve you just as well. Electronics haven't changed that much between today and when the book's prior revision was published (or the revision before that - or even 5+ revisions ago).
Most of the changes are likely going to be very small and minor errata (spelling mistakes most likely).
All that said, Art of Electronics doesn't appear too expensive, even for a current edition (provided you stay away from the academic hardcover version, I'd imagine). Grob's is on a different level price-wise, but again, you can find cheaper versions.
I'd also like to point out Forrest M. Mims III's "Engineer's Mini Notebooks" series as something to go along with the above two books as well (or alone, if you just want the quick-n-dirty hack-on-electronics thing). They were originally sold by Radio Shack back in the day, but today can be picked up via Mims' site (which I think just redirects to Amazon). Old "vintage" copies (the new version combine multiple notebooks into one) can also be had fairly cheaply. They don't go into as much depth as the earlier mentioned books, but they can prove to give a quick and good understanding of the basics (provided you consume them in the proper order of course).
But if you're serious about electronics, they can't substitute for the previous mentioned volumes; get those first, then get the Mims volumes later (IIRC, Mims did write a separate book on learning electronics - it's probably mentioned on his site).
The previous-edition "hack" you describe applies to many textbooks but Horowitz and Hill is a bit of a special case. The current edition is the 3rd, published in 2015. The 2nd edition is from 1989, and while a lot of the material is timeless (part of why the book has become a classic), as you can imagine, a lot has changed in the world of electronics since 1989 and therefore the update to the 3rd edition was widely anticipated for many years. By all means pick up a 2nd edition if you find one cheap, but it is a book where it's probably worthwhile to prefer the current edition if you have the means.
I love H&H but feel it is worth pointing out it is more of a handbook than an introductory electronics book. In particular it doesn't really aim to teach basic circuit analysis (although it does restate a fair bit, for the benefit of those like myself whose prior instruction covered all the theory but failed to instill good intuition). Unfortunately I don't have a solid recommendation for a true beginner's resource for electronics.
...but that last bit has a caveat: These books are only expensive if you opt for "the latest edition". If you are doing this at a hobby level (vs taking a dedicated college course or similar), purchasing an older edition will serve you just as well. Electronics haven't changed that much between today and when the book's prior revision was published (or the revision before that - or even 5+ revisions ago).
Most of the changes are likely going to be very small and minor errata (spelling mistakes most likely).
All that said, Art of Electronics doesn't appear too expensive, even for a current edition (provided you stay away from the academic hardcover version, I'd imagine). Grob's is on a different level price-wise, but again, you can find cheaper versions.
I'd also like to point out Forrest M. Mims III's "Engineer's Mini Notebooks" series as something to go along with the above two books as well (or alone, if you just want the quick-n-dirty hack-on-electronics thing). They were originally sold by Radio Shack back in the day, but today can be picked up via Mims' site (which I think just redirects to Amazon). Old "vintage" copies (the new version combine multiple notebooks into one) can also be had fairly cheaply. They don't go into as much depth as the earlier mentioned books, but they can prove to give a quick and good understanding of the basics (provided you consume them in the proper order of course).
But if you're serious about electronics, they can't substitute for the previous mentioned volumes; get those first, then get the Mims volumes later (IIRC, Mims did write a separate book on learning electronics - it's probably mentioned on his site).