Reddit mentions of America's New Democracy

It might help to have a little more information on what you are hoping to acheive. Do you want to be able to understand the news? Have in depth conversations about policy? Understand the jokes in political comedy shows like Last Week Tonight or the Daily Show?

All of those things can be achieved in different ways. I'm going to assume you have the first goal in mind, being able to understand the news. Great. That's awesome! Here is my advice.

Read the news everyday. Just start simple. Get news updates from simple wire services like Reuters and AP. Maybe listen to NPR's hourly news update at the end of each day. This should only eat up five or ten minutes of your time.

There you go. You can discuss some of the basics of the news now. But perhaps you want to go a little further than that? Awesome! That shouldn't be hard! All it will take is a month (or less!) of reading. Don't waste your time reading anything overly dense or complicated. You don't need college level textbooks to discuss politics. I'd suggest America's New Democracy. Its only 300-400 pages (the rest is fluff) and it is well written, easy to understand, and full of examples and stories that clarify confusing concepts. As you read, you will slowly begin to make connects between the information in the book and events in the news.

At this point you have basically reached your goal. You should be able to discuss contemporary political news with ease. If you wanna take it further consider reading some of the books in Oxfords Very Short Introduction series. These are brief (100-150 pgs) and will give you a surface level understanding of most political topics. Just make sure to read the reviews before you buy. Some (i'm looking at you A Very Short Introduction to International Relations) are not as helpful as you might hope.

At this point, you might consider reading longer articles from some of these outlets.

Edit: Totally forgot to mention! r/ask_politics has a fantastic list of books you can read if you wanna take it even further! Check it out! Its pretty good!