I am going to disagree Strongly with Apostol recommendations and (begrudgingly) with Spivak. I love Spivak, but when you are first starting, it is too hard to keep motivation when you are consistently getting stuck. I suppose you could argue I was a weak student, but I don't care.
I am...
It is most certainly NOT too late. I didn't get serious about studying math until the summer after my sophomore year in college. In fact, "What is Mathematics" was the book that came to mind when I read the first bit of your post---It was the book that got me fired up and interested in math...
$96?! I just looked it up and cannot believe it. Wow I got mine for $2 at a library sale---my bad. It's old, but so is Spacetime Physics (which I agree is a bit much for "poets")
If nothing else you can peruse it (perhaps online for free) and use some of the material. It's a book that no...
Relativity Visualized by Epstein. I read that book really early in college (before I knew what I was doing) and loved it. Might be too light, however, it's packed with insight.
For organic, I am thoroughly convinced the best book is "Organic Chemistry" by Clayden and company.
For inorganic we used atkins and shriver, which was alright, but I felt there was little new material I hadn't seen. In that class I mostly fished for articles and such related to what I cared...
The math and physics went together without too much additional work. The chem made it go overboard. I'm not really into the synthesis and such (was never really into the labs that much), however, many friends of mine related that they needed physics to understand what they were making and how...
I personally use "More Math into LateX" by Gratzer. It's sitting beside me right now. I got it over the other's after reading the amazon reviews and thus far (two or three years later) am quite satisfied.
I majored in Physics math and chemistry in my undergrad. Everyone (other than wannabe doctors) I spoke to in the Chem program at some point or another confessed they really wished they had done physics. This seemed to occur during or after P-Chem. I believe it's because, as said before...