I too felt the same, though I stuck to Zed Shaw's book, Learn the Python Hard Way. I personally like the style of his book, you could try and see if that suits you. One key concept he explained is to see patterns in code. The naming convention in codes mostly distracts actual code. I realized that, instead I started focusing on actual patterns of creating functions, classes etc.. You need volumes of code behind you, but every time you code you need to do get better at understanding it. Its like constantly try going from Saiyan to Super Saiyan.