The Art of Concurrency / Clay Breshears, O’Reilly, 2009
All programmers will want to read this. 300 pages.
1 – Want to go Faster? Raise Your Hands if You Want to go Faster!
2 – Concurrent or not Concurrent?
3 – Proving Correctness and Measuring Performance
4 – Eight Simple Rules for Designing Multithreaded Applications
5 – Threading Libraries
6 – Parallel Sum and Prefix Scan
7 – Mapreduce
8 – Sorting
9 – Searching
10 – Graph Algorithms
11 – Threading Tools
Elements of Programming / Alexander Stepanov, Addison-Wesley, 2009
An advanced book on software design, with examples in C++. It is highly recommended by Bjarne Stroustrup. 250 pages, hardcover.
The algorithm design manual / Steven S. Skiena, Springer, 2008
“This is the most approachable book on algorithms that I have” — Megan Squire. Examples in C, 700 pages, hardcover
The art of multiprocessor programming / Maurice Herlihy, Nir Shavit, Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2008
This book is destined to become a classic, and is required reading for all Java and C++ programmers. It covers the principles and practice of programming `multicore` computers. 500 pages.
Code quality : the open source perspective / Diomidis Spinellis, Addison-Wesley, 2006
Here is an excellent book for Java and C++ programmers. It is the sequel to ‘Code Reading’. 500 pages. “It’s a very dense book, with something to think about in every sentence. If you carefully absorb everything it has to say and manage to implement it, you will be a programming wizard.” — Elizabeth Zwicky
Expert MySQL / Charles A. Bell, APress, 2007
Here is a book on the internals of MySQL, which will be useful when you want to improve or extend it. The book should also be interesting to you if you are planning to create a complex server app like MySQL. Or maybe you want to embed MySQL? I like this book, though the text is repetitive in places. 500 pages.
The art of debugging with GDB, DDD, and Eclipse / by Norman Matloff, No Starch Press, 2008
This book is important reading for anyone programming on Linux in C++, Java, Perl, or Python. It is very readable with 250 pages.
How to think about algorithms / Jeff Edmonds, Cambridge University Press, 2008
Here is a CS textbook for advanced undergraduate courses which is more readable than most. Apply its concepts to make your programs correct and fast. 450 pages.
Cocoa programming for Mac OS X for dummies / by Erick Tejkowski, Wiley, 2009
Here is GUI application programming for the MAC. Learn the Cocoa IDE and a bit about programming in Objective C. The author gives lots of practical advice and some code examples in 375 pages.
GNU/Linux application programming / M. Tim Jones, Charles River Media, 2008
This is about programming using bash, awk, lex, Python, and similar languages. It also covers automake, gdb, gprof, networking and virtualization. It also explains the use of multiple processes and threads with pthreads and IPC. It is very readable. This is a thick book, and covers a lot of topics. It steers clear of the kernel and drivers.