i feel that more often than not in math book threads people post books without never having cracked them open and taken the time to study them in the first place, just parroting shit they've seen elsewhere
as a remedy i propose we post in this thread books that we've actually read, used and studied, and found particularly well-written/useful/enjoyable in the process
i'll start: anything written by this man is gold, but this in particular helped things like field extensions and Galois theory "click" for me