Top 5 will never cover the field. Here's my top 10

* Brookshear and Brylow - Computer Science - An Overview

* Forta - Teach yourself SQL in 10 minutes

* Stallings - Computer Organization and Architecture

* Stallings - Operating Systems - Internals and Design Principles

* CLRS

* Kurose, Ross - Computer Networking - A Top Down Approach

* Sipser - Introduction to The Theory of Computation

* Stallings, Brown - Computer Security - Principles and Practice

* Aumasson - Serious Cryptography

* Russell, Norvig - Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach

And even this fails to cover programming languages. Python is the lingua franca of the field. Most past recommended books are getting outdated, but perhaps Matthes' Python Crash Course 3rd edition.

SICP still deserves to be on such lists.

I also love Concrete Mathematics.

I prefer the Tanenbaum OS books over Stallings. In particular the design and implementation book, although it is more than a decade old now.

Just to add to this, I think John Levine's Linkers and Loaders is also a great reference.

When I need a refresher on the basics of Python, I refer to Python Distilled, and when I want a deep dive, I turn to Fluent Python. Reading these books makes me feel like I'm sitting next to an experienced, witty colleague.

I will take a look at Python Crash Course.

I agree that five books won't ever cover every discipline withing Computer Science. Just providing an introductory book, a university-level textbook, and an expert/graduate-level reference for each discipline turns into a long list.

See if this blog post helps out with sorting through the various CS subjects: https://tolerablecoder.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-short-list-of-...

> * Kurose, Ross - Computer Networking - A Top Down Approach

Over TCP/IP Illustrated?