[shadowofneptune]

My own introduction to this, and to understanding programming rather than writing a few scripts for calculations, was the book "C Programming: A Modern Approach." It covers reasonably up-to-date C, assumes no previous expertise and teaches not just the language itself but practices for structuring programs, how to optimize, etc. I picked it up in 2020 so it should still be useful.

I personally am dissapointed by people recommending "The C Programming Language." It's a terse book that doesn't go into the detail I found helpful when starting.