Fractals The Definitive Guide

Mixed feelings. The good parts are genuinely good; the rest is forgettable.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. The author clearly knows the subject deeply and has thought hard about how to teach it. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The writing is direct and does not waste space on filler, which I value in a technical book. Three stars feels about right. It will stay on my shelf, but it will not be the first one I reach for.

Worth every page. I have already recommended it to two colleagues.

I came to this book already familiar with the basics, and it still had plenty to offer. The book rewards careful reading. Skimming it would be a mistake. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with mathematics.

The clearest explanation of mathematics I have come across.

This is the third book I have read on mathematics this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. An easy five stars from me. I look forward to whatever the author writes next.