I hit a roadblock.
Build Websites With Hugo was published in 2020 and Hugo has come a long way since then. I had figured things had changed in the very first chapter when the configuration file in the book was called config.toml whereas I could only see a hugo.toml in my local folders. By the time I reached Chapter 3, constantly translating the book's instructions to the current version of Hugo was becoming draining.
Despite the mismatch between the book and the current version of Hugo, I spent some time experimenting and comparing the documentation with the examples in the book. I now have a basic understanding of how a Hugo website is structured and how themes work.
Even though progress is slower than I would like, I feel confident about what I will achieve in the next 20 days.