Books on automata theory for self-study I need a finite automata theory book with lots of examples that I can use for self-study and to prepare for exams.
The classical reference is "Introduction To Automata Theory, Languages and Computation" (by Hopcroft, Motwani, and Ullman). Some people also recommend the much older "Formal Languages and Their Relation to Automata" (by Hopcroft and Ullman).

I, however, like "Introduction to the Theory of Computation" (by Sipser). It is very well written, and is a relatively new book.