When you study on your own, how do you choose the right textbook?

I use a two step process. a. I try to find the 10 best books in the topic. So if I want to teach myself Analog Electronics, I would Google for "Best books on Analog" etc. I would refer to Amazon reviews and any other reviews I can lay my hands on. I would boil it down to 10 books. b. I try to find the book that best fits my requirement in terms of content. I assume all 10 books are equally good. I now try to list down what I want to learn, and see (from the index) which book is the best fit. Voila!

I usually google 'best textbook for __' and its variations. Other adjectives that I've used in place of 'best': well written, easy to understand, succinct, most read etc. I also go to places like reddit (specific subreddit for the academic field), Quora or other academic forums and read/ask the same question. I mostly end up finding one or two books that get good reviews from almost everyone irrespective of the website in question. I read whatever little I can from those books on Google Books or Amazon, and if they seem okay, I buy them.

1. Identify where you are in that subject (beginner - intermediate - master) 2. Identify what topics you want to learn (beginners may use beginner's level books to identify their areas of interest) 3. This is the hard part and this is where Google and amazon truly help you. Based ratings / reviews, narrow down to a handful of books. Then, go through their 'Table of Contents' (amazon is a life saver here) and based on what you identified in steps (1) and (2), you will be able to make a rational decision :)

At the start of the semester I would go through the list of (generally 5) subjects and make an exhaustive list of what I expect to learn from each subject. For me "learning" means "what can I do with this subject" or "what can I make from the things I read on this subject". Once I had this, I would go fishing for books. But the results from this practice are many times detrimental to grades let me tell you. This is because the college mostly expected a thorough knowledge of all the various topics but I would end up reading a few topics from heavily specialized books. My knowledge would be "deep but narrow" but what was expected was knowledge that was "shallow but broad". I never got good grades but I think my engineering was awesome. I became the engineer I wanted to be rather that what people (the university) thought I should be. Books by Spicer were my favorite. Also, Apress for programming. But you will feel that most of these books are more like manuals than text books. Also, as a separate addendum, I tried to read the theory from one text book and attempted the exercises from a different one.

If I am looking for a academic study, I usually try googling some of the leading persons working in the field, and look up their website for the courses these guys are teaching and the references that they provide. At times, I have found some invaluable lecture notes while going through this process.