What books would you recommend to start learning about software testing

“Beautiful Testing” is a great book for both beginners and practitioners.

You can read one whole chapter for free here:
http://www.johndcook.com/Beautiful_Testing_ch10.pdf

This chapter talks about testing random number generator (RNG).

Tests for evaluating RNGs can exhibit complexity as well as unifying order. Such tests are beautiful by the classical definition of beauty. RNGs are complex because they are deterministic programs that must give the illusion of being nondeterministic. Tests of RNGs are at least as complex as the generators they validate. These tests are complex because we can seldom say anything absolute about how the RNG should behave. We have to be content with statements about how they should usually behave.

From Amazon’s product page:

Beautiful Testing offers 23 essays from 27 leading testers and developers that illustrate the qualities and techniques that make testing an art. Through personal anecdotes, you’ll learn how each of these professionals developed beautiful ways of testing a wide range of products — valuable knowledge that you can apply to your own projects.

Excerpt from a review by Michael Larsen in Amazon:

Chapter 1 : Was It Good for You? (Linda Wilkinson)

This chapter leads off the book and gives a great introduction to the
mindset of a tester, and the reason and rationale they use to help a
company get the most out of their software development time. It makes
a clear case that “not just anyone can test” (or at least not do so
and do it well), and it helps identify the areas testers really care
about.

Chapter 2 : Beautiful Testing Satisfies Stakeholders (Rex Black)

There are many stakeholders that have a say and a personal vested
interest in our testing being done well and providing a lot of
information to help make good decisions. Those stakeholders range from
customers, vendors and users, but also include such entities as law
enforcement, elected officials, company shareholders and all of the
other key contributors to any project (PM’s, developers, software
developers, and yes, even our fellow testers).

Chapter 3 : Building Open Source QA Communities (Martin Schröder &
Clint Talbert)

Using the example of Open Source projects, getting a community
involved in the efforts will help get people excited about
applications and give those who are part of that community a desire
and drive to see it succeed. My own experience with this has been with
the Selenium Users Group here in San Francisco. While I find using the
tool itself to be interesting, getting involved with and getting to
know others that are also actively involved gives me extra energy and
motivation to learn and practice more so I can likewise share with the
broader community.

Chapter 4 : Collaboration Is the Cornerstone of Beautiful Performance
Testing (Scott Barber)

Scott shares some of his insights into the development of his approach
to performance testing, and the idea that performance testing
challenges can be tackled via collaboration with other groups.

Chapter 5 : Just Peachy: Making Office Software More Reliable with
Fuzz Testing (Kamran Khan)

Fuzzing is described as a technique where deliberately corrupt data is
entered into your application to see how the system reacts to the
inputs (for good or ill). Kamran uses Excel as an example application
and demonstrates using tools that fuzz input and data values.

Chapter 6 : Bug Management and Test Case Effectiveness (Emily Chen &
Brian Nitz)

Emily and Brian share bug management techniques and methods defining
defects as relates to their involvement with Bugzilla and the
OpenSolaris Desktop development team.

Chapter 7 : Beautiful XMPP Testing (Remko Tronçon)

Remko walks through examples and issues faced with testing the
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) and describes his
approach to creating Unit Tests for testing protocol interactions.

Chapter 8 : Beautiful Large-Scale Test Automation (Alan Page)

Alan walks the user through an example of test automation on a grand
scale, and shows that many of the approaches and methods that are used
for small scale automation projects work the same way for large
automation, but the scale is totally different. This chapter helps a
lot in showing neophyte testers that the steps from one world to
another need not be so scary.

Chapter 9 : Beautiful Is Better Than Ugly (Neal Norwitz, Michelle
Levesque & Jeffrey Yasskin)

Python has made its way from an interesting yet obscure language back
in the 90’s to becoming one of the go-to languages of the web and
testing today. Testing an entire development scripting language puts a
whole new area and emphasis on testing and stability.

Chapter 10 : Testing a Random Number Generator (John D. Cook)

Here’s a great example of taking an application that can be tested in
a number of ways, and the correctness or incorrectness can be
difficult to pin down.

Chapter 11 : Change-Centric Testing (Murali Nandigama)

Murali demonstrates a call system and makes the case that, instead of
testing everything over and over again, make a series of tests that
will focus on the change. By using a change-centric testing approach,
the number of tests run nightly can be reduced dramatically.

Chapter 12 : Software in Use (Karen N. Johnson)

Karen describes the feeling and the responsibility of testing
equipment that works in a Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, the very
definition of Mission Critical. This one hit close to home, as it
described a situation my Dad (a retired physician) faced a number of
years ago with a program and a glitch that almost cost patient’s lives
in an infant ICU. Karen describes the process, ups and downs, and
resolutions related to, in her words, working on a product that really
matters.

Chapter 13 : Software Development Is a Creative Process (Chris
McMahon)

Chris makes the case (and a really compelling one) that developing and
testing software is artistic work. Evaluating software quality is
evaluating art, and that, when we recognize the artistic aspect of
creating software, Beautiful Testing becomes a reality.

Chapter 14 : Test-Driven Development: Driving New Standards of Beauty
(Jennitta Andrea)

Jeanette introduces the idea of the Diderot Effect and relays it to
test driven development and the unintended consequences of upgrading
just one area of a process and thinking that it’s all done. To embrace
the beauty of TDD, all aspects of the role and purpose of testing and
embracing TDD have to be applied. Requirements, system design, he very
act of writing code, the pace of work and the level of engagement of
the testers involved all face changes when TDD becomes part of the
landscape.

Chapter 15 : Beautiful Testing As the Cornerstone of Business Success
(Lisa Crispin)

Anyone familiar with Agile Testing will notice the Mind-map that leads
off everything, and gives a clear picture of the ideas that Lisa
wishes to impart. The take away is clear, testing is part of the
overall process of development, and testing is a process at every
stage of development. Testing drives development, and development is
not complete until tested.

Chapter 16 : Peeling the Glass Onion at Socialtext (Matthew Heusser)

Matt makes the point that, in mathematics, often the simplest solution
is the most beautiful solution, and the same holds true for testing.
Through examples at Matt’s company, Socialtext, he shows how they do
not just test to show that they have done testing, but that the
solution they have developed fits what their customers want to see.

Chapter 17 : Beautiful Testing Is Efficient Testing (Adam Goucher)

Efficiency and focusing on how to get the best bang for your buck
requires setting some parameters, using some tools to help focus on
the goal, and making a mindmap to capture test ideas and methods. Adam
uses the mnemonic SLIME to help organize his approach ((Security,
Languages, RequIrements, Measurement, Existing).

Chapter 18 : Seeding Bugs to Find Bugs: Beautiful Mutation Testing
(Andreas Zeller & David Schuler)

Andreas and David discuss the idea of mutation tests, and the tool
Javalanche to perform those tests.

Chapter 19 : Reference Testing As Beautiful Testing (Clint Talbert)

An inside look at how Mozilla tests the variety of products in the
Mozilla portfolio, and how they create tests and their reference
points. Their goal is to encourage people to get involved and test in
the way that is the most simple, direct and easy to understand way
possible.

Chapter 20 : Clam Anti-Virus: Testing Open Source with Open Tools
(Tomasz Kojm)

A look under the hood at an open source product (Clam Anti-Virus, a
tool I actively use and wholeheartedly endorse, by the way) , and all
of the open source tools used to test it, along with the testing
strategies used.

Chapter 21 : Web Application Testing with Windmill (Adam Christian)

Adam provides a quick tutorial in how to set up and use the Windmill
web testing tool and a quick way to implement automated testing for
web applications.

Chapter 22 : Testing One Million Web Pages (Tim Riley)

Tim describes the Spider and Sisyphus projects at Mozilla and how they
use the framework to test huge numbers of pages and web sites.

Chapter 23 : Testing Network Services in Multimachine Scenarios (Isaac
Clerencia)

Isaac describes the ANSTE test tool and how it is used at his company,
eBox, to test environments with multiple and varying machines.