Heh, nice to find someone who walked a similar path! :-) Ah Spivak...yes, I absolutely agree it's one of the best books to build up that mathematical maturity

Heh, nice to find someone who walked a similar path! :-) Ah Spivak...yes, I absolutely agree it's one of the best books to build up that mathematical maturity everyone talks about. For me Spivak took about 6 months and I managed to do almost all of the starred exercises - Gifted? No. Brutally determined: yes. And I was quite fortunate to be in a place in life where I could put serious hours in to it at the time. After that, I learned to relax a bit more as I realised I had pushed myself way too hard and was close to burning out. I still love looking back at that damn book though. There's just something that's so special about it...the way the exercises build upon each other and connect together. It's really unique.