[knicholes]

It depends if you're learning for pleasure or for your career. ;) When I bust out my algorithms/data structures books, I find myself engrossed much like I imagine people get with a good novel. So many times I say to myself, "Whoah! That's so cool!" because of how elegantly/efficiently a problem can be solved that I had never even considered.

My favorite so far is Skiena's "The Algorithm Design Manual". I especially love the computational geometry section.

[gnufied]

How does one read a algorithm or data structure book like an novel? most books require busting out keyboard or pen and paper and solving one thing or another.

Just genuinely curious because I love reading technical books but I can never finish them from page to page.

[knicholes]

This book has "war stories," where he describes the problem he was faced with and his different approaches before finding his awesome solution, so that's probably what gives me that feeling. But additionally, maybe I'm a freak.

[verall]

I think this is just a personal thing. kinda like some people immediately spill their brain to some cache (whiteboard, pen/paper) and others stare at a wall for minutes then write when they have a fuller thought.

If it's a technical book I probably read and enjoy it and forget most of it. If I see a similar problem it might jog my memory and then I can refer back. Only works for good books. Its a different experience than directly interacting with the examples by coding/working out yourself.