This is a very good book, but it's still quite difficult. It's about string theory... the thing that tries (and still fails) to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity.
For quantum mechanics I recommend QED from R. Feynman. Feynman is a master in explaining difficult things in an easy way! QED is easy enough for a layman to understand AND accurate enough for a physicist to look things up.
As you've asked me for more, here is some more: measuring. Please remember my previous post - every time you look, observe, measure or interact in any way with a small particle, the quantum mechanical die will get thrown and the behavior of the particle changes. You can't observe anything without interacting with it. For seeing something, you need light to bounce off it.
Picture two cars colliding. There will be effect on both of the cars. Both will be damaged, both will stop,...
Now picture a car colliding with a mountain. The car will be damaged and stop. The mountain will not move.
The mountain doesn't "feel" the impact of the car that much, because the mountain is very huge compared to the car.
Now back to very small things... Light consists out of particles called photons. If you want to observe a table (or another "big" thing), you can throw as much light particles on it as you want without the table moving. We are used to observe anything without changing the thing. A table stays a table whether you look at it or not.
Probably you can already guess what will come... quantum mechanical particles change their behaviour when you observe them. When a photon collides with an electron, the electron will get knocked away, it's die starts rolling again... the same is true about the photon.
There is nothing magical about this. There has been lots of nonsense been said and written about quantum mechanics and observation... You don't need a conscious person to "observe". It's not something that works from a distance. When you see the electron due to that photon, the photon has already interacted with the electron and knocked it away. You won't know how the electron behaved before the photon knocked it away, but you're able to tell (from the photon's behaviour) how the electron is behaving now.