Excellent advice. The smartest mathematicians and physicists often invent their own funny little diagrams for doing calculations---it's a real pity these usually don't make it into print. An obvious exception is Feynman diagrams.
I can't locate The Spellbook by Serge Lang. Can you give me a link?
My first-year class in field & Galois theory started with the Artin text, and by mid-semester I started daydreaming about ripping out random pages and mailing them to the author.
I can't locate The Spellbook by Serge Lang. Can you give me a link?