I would love to hear more about this opinion.
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I will highly recommend The Little Schemer. You will change after reading this book. It is that good. This book made me truly undersy recursion. I understood recursion before, and used it to solve problems, but this is the book that totally scratched my surface and instilled recursion in it.
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning is the first book of its kind that I ever read. I was surprised by the quality of it. It is a very nice book with scientific and actionable advice. Will recommend it, too. (Although there are some issues like oversimplified model of brain, divided into L and R mode, and in one place it preached different type of learners theory, which is now thoroughly discredited.)
For an approachable programming book, i.e. book not CLRS, Skiena, or DPV, I will not recommend Grokking Algorithm. I will recommend A Common Sense Guide to Data Structure and Algorithm from PragProg Bookshelf. This is a much better and more complete book with exercises that are effective in learning the topics well.
I will look into “A Common Sense Guide to Data Structure and Algorithm” and see if I agree with you.
But yes, little schemer is so good, wished I read it earlier than I did.
But don't get your hopes up too much. I'm still a lousy programmer.