[abhgh]

Recommendation for ESL seconded. One of the best ML books in terms of writing, development of intuition, breadth of topics (ofc doesn't cover everything, esp deep learning).

What I love about the book is how the topics are "connected" so to speak. The narrative within a theme is typically "let's look at problem P, here's technique Q to solve P, but if you thought about P slightly differently you would see something like technique R would also work, so let's talk about that now".

The level of math might be tough for a beginner though.