I'm currently reading a book. A text book. Slashdot today is telling the story of some Maths books printed last century and the comments tell of the dryest text books. Many text books are. Really hard work. This one seems to have the paper edition of one of those lecturers that can turn you on to a subject for ever. I've had two in my life. One a maths lecturer who somehow seemed to make every aspect have some interest. I'm not a very capable mathematician, but I do see beauty in proofs, take pleasure in solving systems of equations etc. I'm sure it is all down to Mr Appleyard. Anyway, this book seems to have something of that aspect. A certain something that turns factual presentation into an interesting read.

Like many, it starts with some background and an overview. The first two chapters do this from five thousand feet to use Tims analogy. Just when I'm starting to itch and become cross that I'm not getting the detail I want, I find a 'carrot'. At the end of a para there is this phrase 'we return to them in 2.4.3', or 'The details of how to compute X are in section 4.4.2'. Each time there is this feeling that the author knows when the reader is getting negative and drops this in to ensure that interest remains. It is certainly working for me. So far I haven't skipped forward to these new sections and I'm convinced that this is the right way to go. There are code extracts and initially I downloaded the book examples and compiled them. I was left with an empty feeling - the code is subtly different from the examples and would have needed many hours of study before I fully understood what was happening. Instead I scrapped it and started typing, building up the examples following the book. I understood it, followed the code and had a working example in no time. And I was grinning again.

I am really impressed with this book. Four authors too. I don't know how they did that as a group. I'm currently only one eighth through the book and may change my mind, but so far it is one of the best presented texts I've seen. The authors are helping me understand. Not showing off what they know, not making statements. I can thoroughly recommend it. What is it? this is the books site. I'm reading the second edition.