Josh, I can help some as I shot Minolta for about 20 years and as you probably know Sony bought them out.

The Minolta 20/2.8 and 28/2.0 are both good lenses. The 28/2.8 is really not that good and the Minolta 24/2.8 I had was just ok. The 35/2.0 is excellent but that becomes more of a normal range on your cropped DLSR vs being a wide on a FF DLSR. The Minolta 50/1.7 is a bargain lens which produces really good shots. My main wildlife lens was a 300/4.0 which I used a lot with a Minolta 1.4x T-con. Longer telephoto primes for Minolta (A-mount) are hard to find now and quite expensive.

I'd suggest you check out dxyum.com for your equipment specific questions as that is a large A-mount society. There is also a very large database of A-mount lenses there.

I'll second the recommendation for John Shaw's book. Basic photography hasn't changed and they are a really great source. Also delve into the various articles posted here.

The good thing about digital is that it's almost free so shot and experiment as much as you can.

Jim