I think you join the many who have taken every command and played with it like the ghost object on command, what does each number do on the screen to the object, then its a case of remembering what did what, same for all the other commands, Like I spent some time working out how the cgs command worked, now you can see how it done by getting dark source.
I see you said you had got the books I found them great for learning how to lay out your code, with it printing to screen a flow of what function had be called.
It can take time to do this as I have had this basic about 6 years now and still not worked out how to do building landscape and people, might do it one week.
Of course you could learn how to hypertext and write your own help file meaning of the command that lacking in details to you.
Just don't forget to have fun when coding.
Dark Physics makes any hot drink go cold.