I'm not sure which forum/sticky I should post this to, so I'll try here; let me know if I should x-post in the C book sticky. I've read both stickies, along with recommendations elsewhere, but they don't quite seem to answer where I'm coming from.
When I was a teenager, I taught myself programming with BASIC on a TRS-80 Color Computer, then 6809 assembly on the same machine, and finally K&R C, though I didn't get as good with it as with the other 2. Then I went to college, where I got stuck learning Pascal (hated it), and then, for reasons that, in retrospect, most likely included way too much time MUDing, I dropped out and haven't programmed hardly at all since.
Now I've decided I want to get back into it, but I want to do it on my own (no classes), at least for a while, as a hobby. It helps that I run Linux exclusively and have been encouraged to re-learn programming and start contributing to non-driver parts of the kernel or other open source software as both a learning activity as well as to really see if I want to do this for real.
The trouble is, looking at this site's recommendations, "C++ w/o Fear" seems a little TOO beginner-y and, while the site recommends it, it would seem most of you here do not! OTOH, I'm not sure "Accelerated C++" may be too much for me or not, although when I look at code even now I can still get the gist of what's happening despite not knowing the language. And then there's the fact that, for what I want to do, I need to both learn C++ and re-learn C. Bjarne says that someone should learn C++ first as it's supposed to be a superset (plus OO, etc), but there sure seem to be some real differences to me on cursory look.
The books I was thinking of getting were TC++PL along with the "C++ in Depth" book series (which includes "Accelerated C++") and maybe, based on a recommendation I saw, "Thinking C++". For C, I would include K&R, of course, but what else, if anything? Is this a good selection, or would you delete or add any other books here? Also, any non-language-specific books you would recommend for a novice like me? (I'm thinking Knuth may be a bit too much!
Thanks for any help!
Mike