[ehudla]

I really enjoyed Udi Manber's /Introduction to Algorithms: A Creative Approach/ when I was starting out. It is not the place for sexy new stuff, but it's a great resource for learning the fundamentals and developing a taste for the subject.

[tmoertel]

+1 to this book. Developing algorithms and their correctness proofs together is a powerful technique and ought to be more widely used.