Real Time Rendering has 2000 references. Click to randomly read a paper

As I grow older and wiser, I've found that a bibliography becomes more-and-more important.

A lot of textbooks can summarize what's going on in the field, but a textbook author is ultimately playing a "game of telephone" between extremely in-depth research and (often) college-students.

As such, the only way to really get "into a field" seems to be reading the literature directly. Its slower and harder to make progress, but the actual papers from the researchers are full of detailed information that goes beyond what a textbook can explain. I'm not a researcher, but still reading the occasional paper can seemingly keep my brain trained for learning.

Real Time Rendering is a graphics-heavy programming theory book, and all of the references here are going to be some kind of graphics-algorithm or data-structure. Still, this silly webpage to "pick a reference at random" seems like a fun way to explore the field.