That is an excellent choice for the OP, being very much easier than symbolic shorthands, it just replaces the commonest letters with simple strokes and keeps the rest as normal alphabet, but with many abbreviating devices to help speed things up.

When searching for the beginner's book PitmanScript Basic Text, ensure to write the name of the shorthand as one word, it isn't a "Pitman" + "script" or the search will return all sorts of the traditional Pitman's shorthand books. There is a similar book to EDSmith's, to start learning from, called Take Note In PitmanScript by Colin Allen and published by Pitman's, here https://archive.org/details/pitmanscript/mode/2up

The PitmanScript Skill Book1 and Book2 take the study further, and Book1 is borrowable on archive.org as well

Previous post on this with more useful information, and a reminder that this system bears no relation to traditional Pitman's but only has that name because they published it: https://www.reddit.com/r/shorthand/comments/14bccq3/pitman_script_emily_d_smith_1974

https://preview.redd.it/68ki1ihstovf1.jpeg?width=869&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f419cea902c8e618e5bbf2a1c3e5361be3bf637b