

Recommended Reading List - laxatives

I recently graduated and find I have a lot more time for self study. I was also a bit inspired by the previous discussion on Alan Kay&#x27;s reading list and wanted to ask for any recommendations. I would love to find another book(s) that will impact me like SICP and GEB. I&#x27;m currently reading High Performance MySQL and I just purchased The Ruby Programming Language and Cracking the Coding Interview, but they aren&#x27;t exactly the same scope as the former two (not that this is a bad thing). Any suggestions? Some topics I have been interested in are Networking, Unix&#x2F;Linux, Bash&#x2F;shell scripting (including sed&#x2F;awk), Java, Ruby, Lambda Calculus -- I don&#x27;t know anything about lambda calculus, I just have a passing interest.<p>Here is a partial list of the books I have considered purchasing next:<p>How to Prove It: A Structured Approach<p>Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines<p>The Art of Computer Programming<p>Practical Object-Oriente​d Design in Ruby<p>The Linux Programming Interface<p>I know some of my former professors have actually read reference manuals cover to cover. Would this be beneficial, or a waste of time for a normal software developer? I was thinking of reading Java The Complete Reference 9&#x2F;E, but it would be a pretty hefty endeavor and probably take a good chunk of a year (I tend to try to read 3-6 books at a time).
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teemo_cute
Why not think outside the box. (I apologize for the overused cliché.) Reading
is only a means for learning something which is the outcome that you want.

Like you I like reading books (and still do), but I found out that I can learn
much faster and efficiently through programming courses offered in sites like
tutsplus, treehouse, infiniteskills, etc.

That doesn't mean that you should stop reading books, for all I know those
video courses are an effective learning companion. You can subscribe to any
learning sites that you want, but if you ask me tutsplus is a good one.

