how to prove it - a retrospection

I just finished working through velleman's how to prove it. All of my notes and solution to exercises can be found here. After reading it, here is what I think.

What I expected before I started reading it?
I expected to learn how mathematicians *think* when they encounter a conjecture. And, hoped that this would make it easy for me to read/understand any proof based books like cormen et al.

What I found?
Essential logic theory, A *solid* understanding of the abstract *structures* used in proofs and how these structures come from logic. You learn set, relations and functions for free as side effects :)

It helped a lot to have some understanding of (propositional)logic and quantifiers before I started reading this book. After working through this book when you will look at any proof, you will first understand the abstract structure behind the proof(in fact you'll just get it without even thinking about it) and then understand the specific details of the particular proof.

In short, I'm glad I read it. Thanks to Ravi for pointing me to it.