On and off, I've tended to read quite a bit. So, I thought I'd put up some reviews of books as I read them. In time, I may go back and add reviews of some of the books I read in the past. Not massively exciting, but I suppose it may be of interest to someone, somewhere (perhaps).
Introduction to Algorithms - Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest
It's really very embarassing that I got this book as a sixth-form prize, and have only just finished reading it properly. It's a truly excellent textbook, and the only texts I've read on a par with it are Hennessy and Patterson, and Alberts and Johnson. In all these cases, they're bricks of a book, but they really do demonstrate that they're bricks not because they're in-depth, but because they're actually quite shallow coverage of huge fields (and here are the references...).
In my defence, the start of this book makes a good reference on common data structures and algorithms, so I'd never really thought of it as a read-through book. It's also certainly not the first algorithms book I've read. However, it does have a couple of stand-out characteristics. The first is its emphasis on proofs of correctness and complexity. Many of these are lovely. The second is the point where it switches gear, about halfway through, and starts doing 'advanced algorithms', which is really a hodge-podge of cool stuff, which you're most likely not going to need, and if you do, you'll want to go read research papers. However, it does whet your appetite for what's out there, in a variety of directions, and makes you realise that the undergrad 'introductory algorithms' course isn't the be-all and end-all of algorithms.
Fundamentally, a classic.
Permalink. Posted 22:32, Wed, 13 Oct 2010.
There is also a complete index of the books.
Mail me at random.user@arbitrary.name.