Someone wasn't content with just one Amazon Affiliate link in his blog post.

I don't buy books that often, but $50+ dollars for a book? Ouch. Are all books this pricey in the US?

This is an advertisement, flagged for improper use of HN. He makes money off each book sold.

They're also bad books. You shouldn't be reading books to learn how to be a good software engineer, anyway.

Of all those books, I've read only 'Introduction to Algorithms' (well, not whole, but parts of) and I wouldn't call it bad. It was a bit tough (but I may be biased, since I was reading it in highschool and it was one of first 'technical' texts I've read) but gave me good overview of most popular algorithms and techniques. It is also recommended at my university, and most of friends have similar opinion to mine. Also I think it will make you a better software engineer - I can't imagine somebody being a good engineer and knowing less about algorithms than I did in highschool. Sure, you don't use Graham's algorithm for convex hull everyday, but it's good to have some basic understanding of how to do geometry, graphs or some familiarity with NP-completness.

At least a few of these are CS classics. Do you actually have something against these books (e.g. Donald Knuth), or are you just annoyed with the affiliate links?

While I agree with your flagging this post - are you seriously saying that Knuth's 'Art of Computer Programming' is a bad book??