title: The Definitive C Book Guide and List
body: <p>This question attempts to collect a community-maintained list of <strong><em>quality</em></strong> books on the <a href="/questions/tagged/c" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;c&#39;" rel="tag">c</a> programming language, targeted at various skill levels.</p>
  
  <p>C is a complex programming language that is difficult to pick up on-the-go by reading online tutorials. A comprehensive book is often the best way to learn the language, and finding a good book is the first step. It is important to avoid badly-written books, and even more importantly, books that contain serious technical errors.</p>
  
  <p>Please suggest edits to the accepted answer to add quality books, with an approximate skill level and a short blurb/description about each book. (<em>Note that the question is locked, so no new answers will be accepted. A single answer is being maintained with the list</em>)</p>
  
  <p>Feel free to debate book choices, quality, headings, summaries, skill levels, and anything else you see that is wrong. Books that are deemed satisfactory by the C community here will stick around on the list; the rest will be regularly removed.</p>
  
  <p>For books that have reviews by the Association of C and C++ Users (ACCU), a link to those reviews should be added along with the book.</p>
  
  <p>See also:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Other C-related resources in the <a href="/questions/tagged/c" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;c&#39;" rel="tag">c</a> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/tags/c/info">tag wiki</a></li>
  <li>A similar list for <a href="/questions/tagged/c%2b%2b" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;c++&#39;" rel="tag">c++</a>: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-book-guide-and-list">The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p><sub>This question was discussed on <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/378475">Meta</a> as part of the <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/378437/deleted-question-audit-2018">Deleted Questions Audit 2018</a>.<br>The consensus was to keep it undeleted and actively maintained.</sub></p>