»Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms

Reading an author as energetic as Andrew Tanenbaum explain concepts of distributed processing, network topology, and resource allocation is all sorts of awesome. This second edition of the work, by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam colleagues Tanenbaum and Marten van Steen brings together the essential concepts of distributed computing. I kept forgetting that it is a text, written for use in the classroom, until I reached the end of each chapter and found the exercise questions ( some answers available online) -- it is as thrilling to read as any mystery book.