I cannot stress how good Learning Malware Analysis by Monappa and Practical Malware Analysis by Honig and Sikorski were as resources when I began learning about Malware Analysis. They provide a comprehensive and ground-up perspective on the topic, outlining the setting up of a secure analysis environment as well as basic and advanced static/ dynamic analysis techniques.
For getting samples, you'll have to do some digging for the hashes of the samples you want (if there are any in particular). Some great resources are theZoo, Hybrid Analysis and VirusShare (the latter two require a brief vetting process).
A brief warning however, do not undergo analysis without first securing your environment. Even if your it is 100% static, there are risks that could have some pretty serious consequences (i.e. the 'Oh Sh*t Double Click').
https://handlers.sans.org/tliston/ThwartingVMDetection_Liston_Skoudis.pdf
This is it but you could also patch the instructions with nops instead of jumping with a little understanding of asm. Its good to learn.
This book is a gold mine:
Learning Malware Analysis: Explore the concepts, tools, and techniques to analyze and investigate Windows malware https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073D49Q6W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_6fWVBb5VJV91Z
Hope it helps.