> I haven't read any of Knuth's stuff because doesn't having 7 volumes kinda imply it can't possibly be well edited?
That's a very bad assumption in this case. The contents of TAOCP are very well edited, just massive in scope and it's one man putting it all together. However, those aren't his only books. Concrete Mathematics is a completed text that expands on, in particular, the math in Chapter 1 of TAOCP. Literate Programming is a collection of papers on topics in programming, and is the first of eight such books. If you want interesting but mildly impractical, check out his Computers & Typesetting [0] which includes two books which are actually literate programs.
That's a very bad assumption in this case. The contents of TAOCP are very well edited, just massive in scope and it's one man putting it all together. However, those aren't his only books. Concrete Mathematics is a completed text that expands on, in particular, the math in Chapter 1 of TAOCP. Literate Programming is a collection of papers on topics in programming, and is the first of eight such books. If you want interesting but mildly impractical, check out his Computers & Typesetting [0] which includes two books which are actually literate programs.
[0] https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/abcde.html