When I self study, I have a hard time stopping and solving exercises; I find attempting to prove the theorems in the exposition much more satisfying. My irrational repulsion to exercises/problems stems from the same experience Shimura describes below.
I discovered that many of the exam problems were artificial and required some clever tricks. I avoided such types, and chose more straightforward problems, which one could solve with standard techniques and basic knowledge.
-Goro Shimura, The map of my life, p.115.
But I fear that I might be missing out. After skimming through similar questions on math.SE, I realized that the exercises actually drill the students so as to have them learn common techniques or even topics uncovered in the exposition. That's why I would like to reasonably check my understanding and benefit from exercises in the ways I just described.
When I am lucky, the most difficult ones, i.e., artificial ones packed with clever tricks, are marked by an asterisk, etc. When this happens, I attempt only the unmarked ones before moving on. But this is not always the case, that a writer marks the difficult ones. On the other hand, there are writers like Eisenbud with a radical attitude in this matter.
The exercises contain a large number of theoretical results, worked out as sequences of problems. I personally don't like hard exercises very much; why spend time on them rather than on doing research?
-David Eisenbud, Commutative Algebra with a view towards Algebraic Geometry, p.6
Now, my request is this:
Can you suggest me writers that have a philosophy similar to Einsenbud's, preferably writing on algebra, number theory or topology?