The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles

I highly recommend this, it made the whole topic of "how does a computer actually work" approachable for me. On their website there's a projects section where they highlight things their students did and there's a project that re-creates the built computer in an FPGA (I belive some ice40) I also recommend this as a follow up.

The book that did this for me: The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles (Nisan and Schocken) https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-second-Pri... (https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-second-Principles/dp/0262539802)

Nand2Tetris, the book, and actually coding the entire project. It earned me a prestigious internship, from a no-name school, which subsequently lead to a FANG position.

NAND to Tetris? https://www.nand2tetris.org/

For me a fun book has to be clearly written and present new (for me) ideas in a somewhat aesthetic way. Density I suppose is secondary. SICP is one of the best examples of the right balance, also Elements of Computing Systems.

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles[0] and its accompanying class Nand to Tetris[1]. Starting at logic gates and moving up through the levels of abstraction until you can build a programming language and implement a video game is the most fundamental approach that I'm aware of. [0]https://www.nand2tetris.org/book [1]https://www.nand2tetris.org/