[suresk]

I wasn't sure if I was just dumb or if everyone recommending this book just kept it on their shelves and talked about it, sort of like Knuth or CLRS. I don't necessarily think it is a bad book, but it is hard to think of a better one to give someone to discourage them from getting into deep learning.

I started with a top-down approach via the fast.ai courses and learning Keras, then spent time brushing up on some of the math concepts (as you said, it assumes a fair amount of previous knowledge), and then went back and started re-reading it, and I finally feel like I'm starting to get some value out of it.

Definitely wouldn't recommend it as a first book, though.