> bare minimum compiler

But who needs books on that? Especially considering that if I would like to write a simple toyish compiler I would rather use a parser generator (handcrafting a parser makes sense only in the case of serious industrial grade compiler).

These books are books on parsers, not books on compilers. IMHO for learning a compiler craft it's much better to use a parser generator (or even Lisp) to skip the syntax part and move to something that constitutes an actual compiler: runtime interaction, exceptions mechanisms, code generation, type inference, intermediate languages, effect tracking etc etc.