Good reference manual for learning to program in C

[Animeniax]

Got me through all my college courses.
The C Programming Language, Second Edition
by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.
Prentice Hall, Inc., 1988.
ISBN 0-13-110362-8 (paperback), 0-13-110370-9 (hardback).

So I finally got to reading this book and chapter 1 is an intro to C as a whole. Unfortunately it's got me worried, as some of the exercises in the "introductory" chapter seem pretty complicated, for a first chapter.

Is the first chapter kind of a "throw you into the deep end to see if you can swim" kind of deal or what? Because it seems they spend the rest of the book explaining the subjects they briefly introduce in the first chapter. But if that's the structure of the book, why are the exercise questions in the first chapter so difficult?

I say they're difficult because (beyond the fact I can't code them) I found an online website with the answers to the exercises. The answers are provided by online contributors who solved the exercises, so I'm wondering if they are pros who wrote complicated code to answer the simple exercises. I see that some of the contributors stuck to only the material and commands introduced in the book to that point, but I can't say if everyone adhered to that.

[Animeniax]

Ahh nuts. I checked some of the less gracious reviews for the book and it's definitely not a good learning text for people who are new to programming and if C is your first programming language. Nuts!

Going to have to go with a C for Dummies book instead.