If you're asking these sorts of questions, you have probably never set foot into an academic organic chemistry class or anything related. Chemistry is all hands on, a book is not going to teach you everything that you need to know. You also won't become a wizard overnight. Ryan, I believe you are way over your head on this one.
Read papers. Learn how to extract. Then move onto synthesis. Once you've gotten comfortable with extractions (because quite frankly, children can do it), continue reading. Synthesis is dangerous if you're totally clueless.
When learning you can supplement your reading material with
ChemWiki.