I've just shocked myself with the following thought: I'm not sure I've ever really got on with the sort of book that you're talking about :)
When I was really quite small, I used to read factual stuff voraciously, cover-to-cover. I had a shelf full of books that were essentially lists of facts with titles like "The DIY Genius Kit" (which google now tells me was written by Gyles Brandreth), all of which I'd read cover to cover. I had various books about animals (and animal factbooks) and a subscription to zoobooks (which seem to have had a couple of make-overs since then - they used to look a lot like the spanish editions mentioned on the back issues page). I remember books with titles like "How things work" and "The big book of everything" too - but the vagueness of my memories defeats my google-fu here. I remember at least one of them being huge (so probably A4) and red.
So yeah - those were all things I reckon to have been worth their weight in belgian chocolate. But I don't remember ever having read a textbook cover-to-cover. These days the only books I seem to read cover-to-cover are fiction. I get most of my non-fiction from articles of one sort or another, or from dipping in to diverse (often anonymous) textbook like things - using them as reference material. Stuff that's online is better for me in this sense, because search tools make dipping in to the right things at the right time a much easier prospect. I particularly like hyperlinked things - wiki style. If I know the word/concept in question, or if I don't really care about it, then I can read on past it. If I don't understand it, and need or want to know more about it, I can dive deeper in another tab.
Perhaps those sorts of tools have taken the place of the parents I used to pester with that sort of question? (what's this word? What's that actually mean? Why not just...)
So - do those half-memories of childhood books count? Does google or wikipedia? (I suspect not)
Having said all that - I'm increasingly finding myself interested in history and economics. A part of that is almost certainly Neal Stephenson's fault, but I flatter myself that I was thinking about using systems and process analysis tools to try to understand the humanities even before I read his stuff. Perhaps I should look for a slightly more grown-up version of the big book of everything - Freakonomics perhaps...
On a tangent - I'm interested to note the spread of the comp textbooks you particularly value... A fair spread of imperative styles and a touch of functional (controversial statement I know - but I don't think lisp is all the way there) - but no static typing. I wonder if a really good book (by your definition - since I'm working with the possibility that they may not quite exist for me) explaining powerful static types exists? It could be a part of a book explaining something else of course - a methodology, paradigm or language. As a first (double barrelled) shot, I'll suggest the haskell wikibook and YAHT.
no subject
When I was really quite small, I used to read factual stuff voraciously, cover-to-cover. I had a shelf full of books that were essentially lists of facts with titles like "The DIY Genius Kit" (which google now tells me was written by Gyles Brandreth), all of which I'd read cover to cover. I had various books about animals (and animal factbooks) and a subscription to zoobooks (which seem to have had a couple of make-overs since then - they used to look a lot like the spanish editions mentioned on the back issues page). I remember books with titles like "How things work" and "The big book of everything" too - but the vagueness of my memories defeats my google-fu here. I remember at least one of them being huge (so probably A4) and red.
So yeah - those were all things I reckon to have been worth their weight in belgian chocolate. But I don't remember ever having read a textbook cover-to-cover. These days the only books I seem to read cover-to-cover are fiction. I get most of my non-fiction from articles of one sort or another, or from dipping in to diverse (often anonymous) textbook like things - using them as reference material. Stuff that's online is better for me in this sense, because search tools make dipping in to the right things at the right time a much easier prospect. I particularly like hyperlinked things - wiki style. If I know the word/concept in question, or if I don't really care about it, then I can read on past it. If I don't understand it, and need or want to know more about it, I can dive deeper in another tab.
Perhaps those sorts of tools have taken the place of the parents I used to pester with that sort of question? (what's this word? What's that actually mean? Why not just...)
So - do those half-memories of childhood books count? Does google or wikipedia? (I suspect not)
Having said all that - I'm increasingly finding myself interested in history and economics. A part of that is almost certainly Neal Stephenson's fault, but I flatter myself that I was thinking about using systems and process analysis tools to try to understand the humanities even before I read his stuff. Perhaps I should look for a slightly more grown-up version of the big book of everything - Freakonomics perhaps...
On a tangent - I'm interested to note the spread of the comp textbooks you particularly value... A fair spread of imperative styles and a touch of functional (controversial statement I know - but I don't think lisp is all the way there) - but no static typing. I wonder if a really good book (by your definition - since I'm working with the possibility that they may not quite exist for me) explaining powerful static types exists? It could be a part of a book explaining something else of course - a methodology, paradigm or language. As a first (double barrelled) shot, I'll suggest the haskell wikibook and YAHT.