My 2 cents, assuming you choose to stick with C, is not to give up entirely on K&R. Yes, it definitely should be supplemented with some more modern reading (which I don't really have any good suggestions about), but K&R is a very good classic book.
When I first started to learn C (coming from a weak fortran background) I was lucky enough to have a copy of K&R sort of fall into my hands. First time into it it all seemed so freakin weird, and I soon gave up. But later I went back to it and things started to make more sense, and I ended up working through most of it. It's a concise book, so there's real meat in every paragraph, and no fluffy sidebars about "Understanding Semicolons For Dummies", so you can't really rush through it. But with every chapter you've accomplished something.
Also, since it sounds like you'd be not only learning the C language, but also learning programming alongside, it would be really important to work all (or most) of the problems to gain that sometimes painful experience.