An hour or two of reading is too short to draw any conclusions here. Choose something in the books that looks interesting to you (not necessarily in the earlier chapters) then spend a week or two working through it, and _then_ decide if it is worth it or not.<p>I suspect that for most of us TAOCP is a rich red wine that we would sip from occasionally to get that feeling of &quot;aha, so <i>that&#x27;s</i> what red wine should taste like!&quot;