If you think there's a lot to get from re-visiting textbooks, try re-visiting the actual sources. For example, Blaise Pascal's vivid accounts of his experiments in fluid dynamics (and his battles with the status quo who believed nature abhors a vacuum) will have you on the edge of your seat like a thriller novel--AND you'll come away with a much better understanding of fluid dynamics than you could achieve in a classroom. Or take Charles Darwin, you'd think "The Origin of Species" would be pretty much sucked dry, but nope, it has vast swathes of low-hanging fruit practically jumping out of the pages, begging for someone like you to make the connections and churn out interesting research papers like you're drawing water from a faucet.

Thanks for this -- this is something that I keep meaning to do and keep forgetting to do w.r.t e.g. Shannon. I should apply it more generally.