[throwaway787544]

La Technique, Jacques Pepin

Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, Julia Child

These books are a combination of background information, recipe, and step by step instruction. So these are more a reference of how to write an implementation guide or Runbook, rather than how to describe an API or present architectural documents.

I also really liked Mastering Algorithms With Perl, and any of the For Dummies books on technical subjects.

[theodpHN]

Agreed on the For Dummies books - the ones I've seen have all been surprisingly good intros to their subjects. Approachable and informative.