[quanto]

ESL is indeed widely recommended for ML but perhaps, I am looking for something more data-exploration focused. In any case, did you find Kevin Murphy's MLPP to be helpful? I read the book in detail and found the book as an introductory mathematical book for discussing ML algorithms, rather than doing any real world data-modeling or prediction error analysis -- it may help with ML, but not sure if it will help me with DS. And the book (at least the edition I used) was full of non-trivial errors.