I recently graduated and find I have a lot more time for self study. I was also a bit inspired by the previous discussion on Alan Kay's reading list and wanted to ask for any recommendations. I would love to find another book(s) that will impact me like SICP and GEB. I'm currently reading High Performance MySQL and I just purchased The Ruby Programming Language and Cracking the Coding Interview, but they aren't exactly the same scope as the former two (not that this is a bad thing). Any suggestions? Some topics I have been interested in are Networking, Unix/Linux, Bash/shell scripting (including sed/awk), Java, Ruby, Lambda Calculus -- I don't know anything about lambda calculus, I just have a passing interest.
Here is a partial list of the books I have considered purchasing next:
How to Prove It: A Structured Approach
Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines
The Art of Computer Programming
Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby
The Linux Programming Interface
I know some of my former professors have actually read reference manuals cover to cover. Would this be beneficial, or a waste of time for a normal software developer? I was thinking of reading Java The Complete Reference 9/E, but it would be a pretty hefty endeavor and probably take a good chunk of a year (I tend to try to read 3-6 books at a time).
Like you I like reading books (and still do), but I found out that I can learn much faster and efficiently through programming courses offered in sites like tutsplus, treehouse, infiniteskills, etc.
That doesn't mean that you should stop reading books, for all I know those video courses are an effective learning companion. You can subscribe to any learning sites that you want, but if you ask me tutsplus is a good one.