Books!

Yay books! I am such a nerd. =) Here’s a list of the books I (or I and my wife) received for Christmas and my birthday:

Categories for the Working Mathematician, Saunders Mac Lane I’ve picked up lots of little bits of category theory here and there just from hanging out in the #haskell IRC channel, reading various papers, etc., but I decided I need to learn it formally for myself. I’ve already started this one, it’s pretty dense but I’m enjoying it so far.

Types and Programming Languages, Benjamin C. Pierce This is the area I’m interested in doing research in, so I’m trying to get a leg up on some of the fundamentals before I start grad school. It seems like a really great book so far (I’m on chapter 11 or something like that).

The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicles 2 and 4, Donald E. Knuth w00t! Knuth rocks.

Inversions, Scott Kim Scott Kim’s mathematically-influenced word art is amazing.

Proofs without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking, Roger B. Nelson This is a neat book full of visual proofs. Hopefully it can provide me with some interesting material for my other blog.

The Golden Section: Nature’s Greatest Secret, Scott Olsen Ditto for this one. Also, Wooden Books (the publisher) makes really beautiful books — you can tell they pay a lot of attention to things like typesetting, layout, and materials.

Flight, Volumes 1 and 3, Various (Kazu Kibuishi, ed.) I can’t say I am some huge graphic novel fan or anything, but I really like these collections of graphic-novel-short-stories.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Dee Brown Got this one from my uncle, who always gives us interesting books. This one looks difficult, but interesting and important. I’m really looking forward to reading it in that this-probably-won’t-be-fun-but-it-will-be-good sort of way.