Crafting Interpreters has been great. It starts with an AST-walking interpreter (in Java), so you get to focus on parsing and the simplest form of interpretatio

Crafting Interpreters has been great. It starts with an AST-walking interpreter (in Java), so you get to focus on parsing and the simplest form of interpretation, and then it moves to a bytecode interpreter (in C) so you get to learn about compiling to a more primitive target via a lower-level language (much of which should translate to a "real" compiler). Very approachable, has lots of side-context and an entertaining style. The language you interpret was custom-designed for the course, which helps a lot, and resembles a simplified JavaScript without all the messy parts.