Well, I hadn't seen your post here and kind of answered this in your introduction
I'd recommend "Practical Malware Analysis" by Michael Sikorsky and Andrew Honig to start. I am a beginner in the area and I've been reading it and following with their laboratory exercises and it's been not only extremely informative but also good fun!
I'm right now reading this book, tools like PEStudio start having a more deep sense for me than before, I promoted it to good book in my own library.
Hope more books suggested here