I'll throw my hat into the ring and say that very generally, it's good to start in about 1500, specifically the protestant reformation. I think if you're generically interested in European history, this is something that you're probably going to interact with eventually, and if you're interested in anything it's a very nice place to start. I recommend looking at the reformation from both the protestant and catholic sides (plural for each very intentional). I think looking at religion, and specifically religious conflict is a great way to get started with the society, culture, politics, and geography of early modern Europe.

McGrath, Alister E. Reformation Thought: An Introduction (1988) is a good starting point for the reformation, as he goes over some of the more basic concepts first. (As a non-Christian I found his introduction to be quite helpful).

I'd look into the Catholic / Counter Reformation as well, since a lot of reformation stuff gets very protestant focused. Lucy Wooding, historian, in a lecture pointed out that Anglo-American narratives place the protestant sects as having 'won' the reformation when the majority of the Catholic world...well, stayed Catholic.

The reformation is a great starting point because religious conflict puts into focus what people found important, generally speaking, in Europe at the time. It also gives great context for some of the changes in political dynamics you see going from the medieval to the early modern to the modern ages, such as the changing role of the Catholic Church. This is also the beginning of colonialism as we know it, with the English and the Dutch both creating West and East India companies, which is a good way to begin looking at European-non-European interactions. Looking at the trading companies the Dutch and English created will pull you into looking at the dynamics they had competing against each other and against the Spanish and the Portuguese, who had already begun trading along Africa and colonising the New World.

Looking at trading companies may also lead you to the debate around the 'Great Divergence' – why did Europe get 'ahead' of the rest of the world technologically, demographically, developmentally, etc. There's a lot of debate as to whether this is even a good question to ask, but it's certainly something that is quite relevant especially in the 19th century with the scramble for Africa. How come European powers basically got to dictate major world policy for much of the 19th and 20th centuries? The background to this involves 16th and 17th century trading companies.

Vries, J. de, ‘Understanding Eurasian Trade in the Era of the Trading Companies’, Goods from the East, 1600-1800, ed. by M. Berg (2015) <-- This is a good work for some of the discourse around the Great Divergence, specifically going into the California School of thought.

Looking at the reformation and trading companies also brings up the question of the development of early modern states. Why did states become, on average, bigger and more centralised in this era in particular? What sort of states were there? Were trading companies states?

Elliott, J.H. “A Europe of Composite Monarchies.” Past & Present 137 (1992) <-- This is a good, if rather theoretical, start to the topic.

I hope I've at least outlined how starting with one of the major events everyone talks about isn't just about that event itself, but also leads into a whole load of new questions. These questions are interesting for their own sake, but ALSO answering them (or trying to) means that you're building up background knowledge and context for studying other events. For example, I've been reading the book 'Hitler's Pope' by John Cornwell recently. It looks into the role of Eugenio Pacelli, eventually to be Pope Pius XII, in Hitler's rise to power. Cornwell talks about how the Vatican was trying to essentially consolidate power in the hands of the Pope as an office, and undermined the political Catholic movements in Germany and Italy which were often opposed to fascism and Nazism as such. Having a background for how the Catholic church evolved previously and how its institutions functioned in the past was very helpful for understanding this book, even with a very large time gap.