[vdoma]

Well, they're difficult books to read to begin with. Knuth himself would be surprised if someone has read and understood them all. At the same time, I find they're hyped up a bit (like SICP). There are plenty of other really good algorithms books IMHO.

[sp332]

http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_t...

(Knuth denies this ever happened.)

[gjm11]

At http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1266502 someone cites a particular occasion on which Knuth supposedly denied the story. As I remarked then, "full of shit" seems quite an unknuth expression.