CS Books I'll Be Reading in 2026

Hi, 2025 has come to an end. It was a wonderful year for me, and I hope it was for you too. I worked with different tech stacks, including Go, Java, Spring Boot, Linux, MySQL, Cassandra, ClickHouse, Kafka, and encryption algorithms.

But one thing that bothers me is “we work with computers on a high level” and we really don’t know how a computer works, how memory works and all that stuff. That’s why I also started learning some foundational computer science topics in the last 2 months.

I have a deep interest in learning how computers work. That’s why my 2026 reading list focuses on foundational computer science rather than a particular language or framework. This is a personal reading list, not a ranking of the books.

1. Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

I’m a backend engineer by profession; hence, it became very important for me to understand operating systems. But in my opinion every software engineer needs to know about OS in depth. Because OS is the core layer on which your programs run. If you know about OS, you can build efficient and reliable software.

2. Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective

This book does not teach “How to code?” Instead, it will teach “How computer system works from a programmer point of view". It explains how C code maps to machine code, memory, and the processor. It teaches about performance, caching, virtual memory, and concurrency. This book is useful for readers who want to understand computers at a lower level.

3. Distributed Systems — Maarten Van Steen

For a backend engineer, distributed systems are a must-know concept. In simple terms, a distributed system is a collection of computers that are connected over a network to achieve a common goal. Microservices architecture is an example of a distributed system. If you think about backend engineering beyond APIs, you will see a world of distributed systems.

4. Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Large-scale systems can process enormous volumes of data and requests. At that scale, designing reliable data systems becomes difficult. This book teaches how to design reliable, scalable, and maintainable data systems. It explains core concepts like storage engines, replication, partitioning, and consistency. We can learn the trade-offs behind databases, queues, streams, and distributed systems.

5. Database Internals

In my opinion, if you need to work effectively with any technology, you need to know how this technology is built under the hood. We work with databases every day without knowing how our queries are processed. This book teaches how databases are built under the hood. It explains storage engines, indexes, B-trees, LSM trees, and write-ahead logging. We learn about concurrency control, transactions, and recovery mechanisms.