if you want a high-level book about 'how to think about programming', or 'good programming principles'

Code Complete - written by an ex-microsoft guy, this is a good book for programming philosophy, for best-practices to use when developing code. If you are asking yourself what kinds of high-level things you should be thinking about when writing software, this is a good book to read. Easy to skim and just pick up bits and pieces as you feel like it.

If you are learning C and you want a book to refer to:

The one book you must have if you are a C programmer!  The thing that's wonderful about this book - it is small. This isn't one of those 'programming bible' type books that you could throw at an intruder and likely kill him because the book is so heavy. Those giant books just overwhelm me.

When you don't remember the syntax of a C function, you go to the back of this book. It has what you need, and nothing more. Forgot again how to print a floating point number to 3 decimal places? Go to the printf command in the back and figure it out. We all forget these little details of the language - I'm looking at this book all the time as I'm making my videos.

If you are looking for a book with a bunch of examples, a book that really attempts to teach you to program, this is not that book. This is more like a dictionary, less like a novel. I'm not sure what book would be good for that purpose. Of course I'm biased, I think my site is good for teaching you!

I've had my copy since I started at Motorola way back in 1989. It's like an old friend. Yeah, I need to get out more often.

If you buy via one of those links above, I get some tiny commission, which I'd of course appreciate.

I'm also a big believer in saving money though, so I recommend you check out these books at your library, if available, before (or instead of) actually buying them.

If you do want to buy but are only going to get one of them, I'd get the C programming language book. It will always be handy to have as a reference. And don't worry about buying a used copy; C hasn't changed in about a hundred years, so an older, cheap used copy would do just fine as a reference.