Hi Quinn,
Many potters I know consider "Clay and Glazes for the Potter (Paperback)
by Daniel Rhodes (Author), Robin Hopper (Author)" to be the bible, but it's a little dry and has very few images of glazes or clay bodies.
A new book came out a few years ago that I LOVE -The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes: Glazing & Firing at Cone 10 (A Lark Ceramics Book) (Paperback) by John Britt (Author). It has many pictured samples, and it groups glazes into chemical categories, so you get a better idea of how the chemicals are functioning in the glaze.
Another book called Hands in Clay by Speight and Toki gives one of the best concise historical perspectives on how glazes, clay bodies and firing techniques developed.
Good luck!

Hope you like studying chemistry... or the althernative is the baking bread technique where you have a recipe and over time tweak it to your liking. You could get a job at a pottery supply outfit that mixes up a variety of clay and sells it.

You could spend a life time studying the thermo dynamics of clays and glazes but you probably won't have much time to make things. Think about the guys who put the ceramic covering on the space shuttle vehicles. All they do is design clay and glazes for special applications. Alfred University is one of the places you could get a PhD in the subject.

So, keep desire to make clay and glazes in balance. Good clays do come right out of the ground, ready to use.