Yeah, I read one or two books like that when I was a kid :-) I particularly remember one called How to Hold a Crocodile, which told you how to do all sorts of random things (measure a flea's leap, play Nine Men's Morris, get a bill passed in the US Congress, become a saint, and yes, how to hold a crocodile :-) )
More generally, I think we're talking about the same sort of book - I haven't read Programming Perl from cover to cover, though I think I've got pretty good coverage of the text. Reference material, as you say. I think I've only read one maths book cover-to-cover, and that's Joachim Kock's Frobenius Algebras and 2D Topological Quantum Field Theories. It's clear, readable and thought-provoking, but I don't refer to it much these days.
I haven't found any really good economics books, although I haven't been looking all that hard - actually, I was hoping antoniabaker might recommend some... Freakonomics is fascinating, but I'd have preferred it to be a bit longer and deeper - you can read it in a few hours.
Static typing: I mentioned a book of exactly that sort, in the shape of Modern C++ Design, which is really about template metaprogramming, and thus about the C++ type system and the crazy things you can do with it. The functional bits of On Lisp are pretty dull, or at least standard - the interesting bit is when he starts talking about macros. I considered mentioning Paul Hudak's The Haskell School of Expression, but decided against it, on the grounds that it's not clear enough.
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More generally, I think we're talking about the same sort of book - I haven't read Programming Perl from cover to cover, though I think I've got pretty good coverage of the text. Reference material, as you say. I think I've only read one maths book cover-to-cover, and that's Joachim Kock's Frobenius Algebras and 2D Topological Quantum Field Theories. It's clear, readable and thought-provoking, but I don't refer to it much these days.
I haven't found any really good economics books, although I haven't been looking all that hard - actually, I was hoping
Static typing: I mentioned a book of exactly that sort, in the shape of Modern C++ Design, which is really about template metaprogramming, and thus about the C++ type system and the crazy things you can do with it. The functional bits of On Lisp are pretty dull, or at least standard - the interesting bit is when he starts talking about macros. I considered mentioning Paul Hudak's The Haskell School of Expression, but decided against it, on the grounds that it's not clear enough.