Just get a cheap old office PC from eBay or local market place for £50. Add your disks using ZFS (don't use raid as it basically doesn't work in modern systems). I'd be tempted to get one 4tb internal drive and one external usb to use as your backup drive.
Lots of good suggestions so far, Brave New World and Don't Look Up would be right up there for me. But my #1 is this...
The Machine Stops (PDF)
Written in 1909 so out of copyright, this book is so ahead of its time it makes remarkable reading today. The amount of things predicted that describe the modern day is incredible. It's also not that long, so well worth a read.
I know everyone tries to avoid this and I'm sure you're trying to learn on the cheap like everyone else, but honestly, get a few lessons with a good local tutor. You'll learn more from them in a few short hours than you will with months of trying to do it yourself.
Famous guitarists never seem to say how much hard work went in to perfecting their craft, but it is a lot. And all the good ones took lessons and some still take lessons even though they're on international tours and have sold millions of albums.
Thumb position is very important and you probably need the guitar neck far far higher than you expect. Get that right and things become easier. There are some good spider exercises for practising. I found barre chords are impossible on a poorly setup guitar but are easy if you have it setup well.
I remember being absolutely blown away when this game came out at how realistic it looked. But I was young and clearly it isn't realistic, just great looking.
Watergate scandal