Some books that I really enjoy(ed)
It's been quite some time since I blogged about what I've been reading. That's not because I haven't been reading -- au contraire! -- but rather because I've been busy doing so. I find these posts interesting for myself, so that I can look back and see where my interests were at a particular point in time. Given the sheer number of additions, I can't properly rate them like I have in the past. Here are the more interesting ones, those that stick out in my mind:
Music
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Theory of Harmony, Arnold Schoenberg. 1922.
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Psychology of Music, Carl E. Seashore. 1938.
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Study of Counterpoint, John J. Fux. 1965.
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The Study of Fugue, Alfred Mann. 1987.
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Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century, Knud Jeppessen. 1992.
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Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, Christoph Wolff. 2001.
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Guitar Man: A Six-String Oddyssey, or, You Love that Guitar More than You Love Me, Will Hodgkinson. 2006.
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Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Oliver Sacks. 2008.
Mathematics
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Euclid's Elements (Books 1 - 13). 300 BC.
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The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton and Andrew Motte. 1846.
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Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Alonzo Church. 1944.
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Foundations of Algebraic Topology, Samuel Eilenberg and Norman Steenrod. 1952.
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Foundations of Mathematical Logic, Haskell B. Curry. 1963.
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Diophantus Of Alexandria -A Study In The History Of Greek Algebra, Sir Thomas L. Heath. 1964.
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From Zero to Infinity: What Makes Numbers Interesting, Constance Reid. 1964.
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Euclid in the Rainforest: Discovering Universal Truth in Logic and Math, Joseph Mazur. 2006.
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Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra, John Derbyshire. 2007.
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God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History, Stephen Hawking. 2007.
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Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics (Modern Library Chronicles), David Berlinski. 2008.
Computers
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LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual, John McCarthy. 1962.
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Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines, Marvin Lee Minsky. 1967.
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The Theory of Parsing, Translation, and Compiling (Volume I: Parsing), Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman. 1972.
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The Theory of Parsing, Translation, and Compiling (Volume II: Compiling), Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman. 1973.
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Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs, Niklaus Wirth 1976.
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A Discipline of Programming, Edsger W. Dijkstra. 1976.
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Architecture of Concurrent Programs, Per Brinch Hansen. 1977.
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The Elements of Programming Style, Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger. 1978.
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Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas, Seymour Papert. 1980.
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Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective, Edsger W. Dijkstra. 1982.
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CLU: Reference Manual (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), B. Liskov, et al. 1983.
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Algorithms and Data Structures, Niklaus Wirth. 1985.
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Communicating Sequential Processes, C. A. R. Hoare. 1985.
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The Little LISPer, Third Edition, Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen. 1989.
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Common LISP, The Language, Second Edition, Guy Steele. 1990.
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The High Performance FORTRAN Handbook, Charles H. Koelbel, et. Al. 1993.
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201 Principles of Software Development, Alan M. Davis. 1995.
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Algol-like Languages (Progress in Theoretical Computer Science), Peter O'Hearn and Robert Tennent. 1996.
Based on this list, you might surmise that I read a lot. ;) In fact, I typically have between 3 and 5 books going simultaneously (how parallel of me), so I use the term "read" somewhat nontraditionally. I prefer to absorb the information by immersing myself in many books in the same genre simultaneously, instead of committing to a single one. This seems to be effective, but is also slightly odd and perhaps quite esoteric to other people; the result is that every room in my home is littered with books each in some possibly long-forgotten state of being "read" (along with tattered academic papers, language manuals, etc). I like it, but some people believe this is an indication that I'm a tad insane. C'est la vie.