Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley ( http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/ http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/ ) is a pretty easy read and introduces t

Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley ( http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/ http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/ ) is a pretty easy read and introduces the reader to algorithms quite nicely. There's a few important takeaways from it in how to approach problems, and it's almost universally applicable (even though almost everyone reels at being presented with Visual Basic in the example code).