My gripe is that there is an order through them that is an excellent textbook, but the lexical order through the book is usually very long winded and meanders i

My gripe is that there is an order through them that is an excellent textbook, but the lexical order through the book is usually very long winded and meanders immensely. Meandering through topics is good, but he meanders through style as well: sometimes he was in a mathematical mood, sometimes he was feeling more practical. I think it's better to intuit first then formalize, Knuth likes to do these in groups of pairs rather than a pair of groups. Knuth is not the worst at this, but the lost potential is the greatest in his writing.